Over 90,000 children have visited the three farms the charity now runs at. They moved to Devon to set it up, where they still live. The couple established the charity Farms for City Children in 1976, which gives inner-city children an experience of the countryside. He discovered his love of storytelling when he made up tales for his students, and his first book was published in 1974. He then became a primary school teacher in Canterbury. Shortly after marriage, he studied English, French and Philosophy at King’s College London. Morpurgo married Clare, daughter of the founder of Penguin Books, Sir Alan Lane, aged 19, with whom he had three children. He went to army training in Sandhurst on his stepfather’s insistence but left after nine months. The family lived in London and Essex, and Morpugo was sent away to school in Sussex and Canterbury.

His parents divorced, his mother remarried, and he and his brother took on Jack’s last name. While his father was away fighting in World War II, his mother met Jack Morpurgo. Michael Bridge was born in 1943 in St Albans, the child of two actors. He co-created the Children’s Laureate position with then-Poet Laureate Ted Hughes and became the third to hold it, from 2003 to 2005. However, he’s best known for the novel War Horse, which was adapted into a critically acclaimed stage play, and a blockbuster film by Steven Spielberg. He’s written over a hundred books in his nearly fifty-year career, including Private Peaceful and Kensuke’s Kingdom. Michael Morpurgo is one of Britain’s most beloved children’s authors.

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