Michael Morpurgo

Michael Morpurgo OBE
Morpurgo at a Paris book fair in March 2009
Born	Michael Andrew Bridge Morpurgo (1943-10-05) 5 October 1943 (age 73) St Albans, Hertfordshire, UK
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	British
Alma mater	King's College London
Notable awards	OBE MBE
Spouse	Clare Morpurgo MBE
Children	Sebastian Horatio Rosalind
Website
www.michaelmorpurgo.com

Michael Morpurgo, OBE, FRSL, FKC, DL (born 5 October 1943) is an English book author, poet, playwright, and librettist who is known best for children's novels such as War Horse (1982). His work is noted for its "magical storytelling", for recurring themes such as the triumph of an outsider or survival, for characters' relationships with nature, and for vivid settings such as the Cornish coast or World War I. Morpurgo became the third British Children's Laureate, from 2003 to 2005.

Morpurgo was born in 1943; his biological father was actor Tony Van Bridge. His mother, Kippe Cammaerts (otherwise Catherine Noel Kippe, daughter of Émile Cammaerts), who had been an actress, met (and in 1963 married) Jack Morpurgo (subsequently Professor of American Literature at the University of Leeds from 1969 to 1982) while Bridge was away during World War II. Morpurgo did not find out who his biological father was until he was 19, when watching the 1962 film version of Great Expectations with his mother, in which Bridge appeared.

Morpurgo was educated at schools in central London, Devon, Sussex and Kent; his unhappy experiences at boarding school would inform his novel The Butterfly Lion. He attended the independent prep school Mount House in Devon until he was 13. He then went to The King's School, an independent school in Canterbury, prior to studying at King's College London and graduating with a 3rd class degree before entering the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He then joined the teaching profession with a job in a primary school in Kent. He also, from 1968, briefly taught at St. Faith's School in Cambridge.