Michael Morpurgo: 'Three arteries were blocked and they wouldn’t let me out of hospital'
Michael Morpurgo's latest book, Spring, is a non-fiction series of observations on the season unfolding around him. Picture: Brodie Lea/PA.
After going to the GP with what he thought was indigestion last year, bestselling children’s author Michael Morpurgo found himself undergoing a triple heart bypass – and an enforced break from writing.
“We all have this cliché that you’ve got pains in your chest and it’s agony. Oh no, I went to my wonderful NHS doctor in Hatherleigh in Devon and I said, ‘Look I think I’m getting indigestion rather too often and it’s rather strange because it always comes in the same place between my shoulder blades.’
“Within 10 days I was having it done because it was found all three arteries were blocked and they wouldn’t let me out of hospital because it was too serious,” the 81-year-old former children’s laureate and bestselling author of recalls.
“I’ve had opera ions before, I’ve been in hospital rather too often but this was by far the most serious. It was six-and-a-half hours under the knife but what I remember afterwards was the marvel of it, the fact that they take a vein from your leg and replumb it and use it as an artery into your heart.”
When he left hospital, he found trouble writing, he reveals.“I couldn’t really concentrate because after that my mind had gone somewhere else, but it’s gathered itself now, mostly. An enforced break wasn’t really good for me. It lowered my spirits not to be writing. Now, I’ve always got a project and I like that.”
The young people he meets in the course of his work, whether it’s one of his plays or to talk about his many books, always lift his spirits, he continues. He and his wife Clare have three children, eight grandchildren and three great grandchildren with another on the way, and you get the feeling they keep him young.
“One of the reasons I love being with young people is they help me lift my head up and look upwards and forwards.”
Today, he recognises how lucky he has been and lives for the day – but there’s a lot of looking back on fond memories, he agrees.
“My mother had angina, I had a grandfather who died of a heart attack so I know that that sort of thing has been a problem in the family, but what I’m aware of is that I have had 15 years longer than my mother already.”
His bestselling books, including and , frequently introduce children to harder themes while familiarising them with the beauty of the natural world.
His latest, , his first adult non-fiction in 40 years, written before his heart problems were diagnosed, is a celebration of the season that he loves, the anticipation, the signs it is upon us and his memories of the years at his farm in Devon with his wife, Clare, to whom he has been married for 61 years.
“My goodness, it would have been a so much better book if I hadn’t had three arteries blocked up,” he quips.
Both former teachers, in 1976 the couple founded the charity Farms For City Children which has given more than 100,000 children from disadvantaged communities the experience of working together on their three farms in the heart of the British countryside.
Readers can gently meander with him in his beloved Devon as he wonders at the nature, the insects, frogspawn-spotting, the Torridge River, the lambing season, the birds, the first bluebell of spring and the return of swallows.
The landscape of the countryside may not have changed superficially, he says, but it has changed.
“We [society] have overfarmed the land, just as we’ve overused every inch of the land that we’ve got. We pollute it too much, we try to extract too much out of it.
“When we came to live in Devon over 50 years ago, the rivers weren’t perfect but there were trout in the streams, but there’s hardly any now. People are working hard to put that right but we have to have the next generation of children understanding that we’ve been greedy for our food and pleasure.
“We have to understand that we do damage when we take out cars too much or fly on planes too much. We have to get to a situation where we are more sensitive to the needs of the world about us.”
is also a reflective read, a gentle nostalgic step back in time to his life and his observations about how some things change and others don’t. The book is part of a series on the seasons – Bernardine Evaristo will tackle summer, Kate Moss, autumn and Val McDermid, winter.
In , he relays so many memories – but is he still looking forward? “When you get to 81 you probably spend quite a lot of your time naturally looking back. I have a pretty good memory of my youth and the people I knew then. You lose those friends. Any person you meet of 80 has lost some friends, the most important people in their lives, that’s just what happens.
“When I go on my walks around the countryside I do remember the people I’ve done those walks with. I think about how the world is now and how it could become again, but one of the reasons I loved writing this book was to remind me of the people I’ve known, many of them much older than me, who now do lie in the village churchyard.
"You are living with absence and that’s quite painful. You do have to come to terms with the fact that you aren’t going to be here forever.”
Many of Morpurgo’s fictional books tackle the consequences of war and seem particularly relevant now, given the situation in Ukraine and Gaza.
His most famous work, , was adapted into a play which has been touring with various companies for the best part of 20 years, and a film. Why has it been so successful?
“It’s the simplicity of it. It’s the story about a boy and a horse and how much they love each other and about a war that disrupts their lives and turns everything upside down, and the horse is sold away and the boy’s one thought is to find that horse again.
"That longing to be reconciled is reflected in the war itself. It’s about a longing for peace and we’re feeling it again.
“ was born in the same place you’ve been reading about in ,” he continues. “It’s the same river, the same village, the same church, the same graveyard. To some extent I have used this in the fiction that I hope in a way is looking towards the future, a hope for peace and a hope for a countryside that we can respect and love and care for.”
He is optimistic about the future because of education, he says, and feels that the next generation will put the environment right.
He still visits schools and book festivals, while films and plays of his stories remain popular, the latest of which, , is based on his book . It all helps him keep connected with young people, children and teachers.
Meanwhile, although he is back to writing he says he is still recovering.
“I’m much more muddled than I used to be, or maybe that is just age catching up.”
- by Michael Morpurgo is published by Hodder Press, p. Available now.
