Latest news with #Morpurgo
The Independent
17-03-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Michael Morpurgo recalls Putin encounter that made a ‘shiver go down my spine'
Michael Morpurgo has opened up about feeling notably uneasy after attending a 'strange' event with the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. The author, 81, who's best known for his children's novels War Horse Private Peaceful, and The Butterfly Lion, made a trip to Russia – where his books were popular – in 2002. During the visit, Morpurgo attended a party organised by Putin's first wife, now known as Lyudmila Ocheretnaya, as an international gathering of children's librarians. Speaking to The Times, Morpurgo said: 'I was at the Kremlin at a huge party with 400 librarians. Can you imagine our country offering this to librarians?' He recalled: 'Everything was gold, and there was vodka and caviar. All the first ladies, including Mrs [Cherie] Blair, made speeches and then there was a great roll of drums and in came Putin, striding down the carpet. 'I felt a shiver go down my spine because the manner of this reception was extraordinary and strange.' Elsewhere, Morpurgo praised Britain's prime minister Keir Starmer for not having the same bolshie attitude as Putin or the United States president Donald Trump. 'He's not a shouter and he's not a show-off,' the author said of Starmer. 'I'm fed up with show-offs. I don't care if they're from Russia or America or here. 'I want people who really do have some experience of the world, and have developed a care for other people,' he said, explaining what bothers him about Trump and Putin is their open 'disrespect' for others. 'If you start talking about other people as if they are less important, that their culture is less important, then you're on a road to confrontation,' he added. However, Morpurgo did admit he is angered by the Labour government's plans to drop the inheritance tax exemption for farmers. 'You don't have a go at the pensioners and the farmers,' he said. 'I know because I live in the middle of the farming culture. To threaten one particular group seems to me to be completely wrong.' He continued: 'It's done by people who are fundamentally urban, who don't really understand what the countryside is about.'Morpurgo added that Britain is too fond of social and geographical divisions. 'We exploit them. And there is a massive division between town and country,' he said. 'It's understandable: it's part of having our industrial revolution earlier than other countries,' he claimed. 'If you go to Italy or France, where their industrial revolution came rather later, where they are more in contact with their food, with their farmers, it's different. When French farmers have a protest there is considerable support among urban people.' It comes after the Labour Party was accused of 'holding farmers in contempt' after halting applications for a major post-Brexit payment scheme last week. In what has been dubbed a 'warm on farmers' Labour announced it would cancel the sustainable farming incentive (SFI), just six weeks before farmers are set to file their tax returns. Labour has already seen massive protests from farmers with hundreds of tractors descending on Westminster in recent weeks and the latest development threatens further action.
The Guardian
24-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Stories from Cornwall brought to life in new Michael Morpurgo play
The stories about life in Cornwall have flowed in: the hairdresser who gives everyone the same style because it copes best with the elements; the teacher who took a snowball in a cool box to the Isles of Scilly: the cat who follows the same routine as a country singing legend. Over the last five years, scores of such tales have been painstakingly collected and blended into a new play called White Horse that reimagines a beloved book by one of the great chroniclers of south-west England, Michael Morpurgo. Taking a break from rehearsals before the play's opening in the old Cornish mining town of Redruth, the director Simon Harvey said themes that surfaced during the five-year story- gathering project included the importance of place, family, home and belonging – plus the enduring vitality of storytelling. 'It has been a fascinating project, a really interesting way of working,' he said. 'More than 80 stories emerged – so much good material. We went into the communities and spent a few days there and started chatting to people and collecting stories.' Some nuggets people told Harvey and his team find their way into the play, based on Morpurgo's book The White Horse of Zennor and Other Stories, such as a woman who described an existential fear of the stark horizon after moving to north Cornwall from Manchester. 'There are bits like that that are peppered all the way through the script,' Harvey said. Other stories do not directly appear but are there in the subtext. 'Some are more overt and others subtle, more of a feeling, a theme that is woven in.' Morpurgo's 1982 book features five stories centred on the village of Zennor, a place adored by artists, poets and mystics. 'That was the first spot we visited,' said Harvey. 'We did a story-gathering there. Invited people, laid on food, hired the village hall.' And the tales began to emerge. Realising there was a wealth of Cornish stories to tap into, the theatre and film company behind the play and project, o-region, applied for money from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, a government programme that funds projects in places that can be hard to get to or are often bypassed – in this case, Bude on the north coast, the market town of Launceston, the Isles of Scilly, the Treneere estate in Penzance, one of the most deprived in England, and Redruth. They found the hairdresser who gives all her clients the same 'choppy cut' in Bude. The Scilly teacher said she took the snowball in a cool box to her pupils from the mainland because snowfall on the islands is so rare. A Treneere resident told them their cat went out mousing 9-5, so they named her Dolly Parton. Sign up to The Guide Get our weekly pop culture email, free in your inbox every Friday after newsletter promotion A rocker in her 90s regaled the researchers with an account of a punk band stripping off on stage in Launceston while someone mentioned the modern legend of north Cornwall surfer Peter 'Vicko' Vickery inventing the surfboard leash in the 1950s using a washing line. As well as enriching drafts of the White Horse script, many of the stories have been turned into pieces of prose or poetry by a team of writers and some are being released in a podcast series called From the Horse's Mouth. Harvey said: 'There's a lot in there about living in isolated places. We've learned a lot about these towns and villages and the people who live there. It's been hugely rewarding.' White Horse is being performed from 28 February to 8 March at the Regal Theatre in Redruth
