ON a beautiful late-winter morning, Britain’s storyteller-in-chief Sir Michael Morpurgo, 82, sits back in his armchair in a secluded Japanese-style tea house on his farm in beautiful Devon.

He is youthful and wise all at once as he begins to respond to gently probing questions a hush falls over the room. A kind of kinetic energy flows from this gentle and funny man.

We are talking about his book Private Peaceful which is about to be revisited as a major touring stage production that will return to theatres across the UK in Autumn, bringing fresh life to the acclaimed one‑person adaptation directed by Simon Reade.

Author of over 150 books, he is a defining voice in children’s literature: War Horse, The Butterfly Lion, Private Peaceful, Farm Boy and more are cherished as deeply by parents and teachers as by young readers.

In his award-winning 2003 novel Private Peaceful, Morpurgo delivers a deeply moving account by a seventeen-year-old soldier on the Western Front. Through the eyes of Private Thomas “Tommo” Peaceful, counting the hours to a dawn execution for cowardice. As he looks back over his childhood, his memories are full of family life deep in the countryside. 

Thirty years ago, while he was conceiving his story, Morpurgo and his wife, Clare, came upon a War Cemetery near Ypres, one name caught their eye: Private T.S.H. Peacefull, killed on 4 June 1915. It was never in question that this would become the name of his protagonist.

I ask why it is important for him to see his work regionally beyond major cities. “Well, soldiers from the First World War came from all over,” he says.

“Every single town should have a theatre. It’s the right of every child and every person in this country to be able to go to a theatre and not spend a fortune. When arts are decided in terms of worthwhileness; by the money you spend on them, then you have a problem,” Morpurgo says.

One of the pressures in schools today, Morpurgo believes, is time. “Teachers simply don’t have the space in the day,” he says. Then he leans forward. “I want to mention Mrs Skiffington.”

She was headteacher at Wickhambreaux Primary where he began teaching — and, he says, she understood instinctively why stories matter. Delightfully unconventional, she once arrived at a staff meeting with what she called a revelation.

“The school day is half an hour too long,” he nods. “I want to go home, you want to go home — and most importantly, the children want to go home. No one is learning anything. So, from three o’clock until half-past, every afternoon, choose a story or poem you love and read them aloud. Let the children leave school thinking and dreaming about stories.”

Morpurgo – a father of three, a grandfather of eight and a great-grandfather of four – smiles when asked about the importance of keeping storytelling alive. “It’s vital,” he says. “Storytelling is love in action.”

The former children’s laureate recalls recently watching his grandson-in-law read to his one-year-old great-grandson. The child was too young to follow the plot, he admits — but that wasn’t the point. “He feels the arms around him. He hears the voice resonating on his back. That’s where stories begin — in warmth, in closeness, in connection.” 

It echoes his own childhood, when his mother would sit between his and his brother’s beds and read aloud — Shakespeare, John Masefield, Edward Lear — giving each character a voice, filling the room with rhythm and music. “Sometimes it was funny, sometimes it was sad,” he says, “And do you know,” he adds, “it was always alive.”

That, he believes, is the essence of it: “If you’re telling a story to a child, you must mean it. Children know when you do. And when you do, the story becomes part of the bond you share — something that stays with them for life.” 

He and his wife Clare founded the brilliant Farms for City Children, following the arrival of the first city children, a group from Chivenor Primary School in Birmingham, on January 26th 1976. Fifty years on, he describes the charity as his greatest story.

What began as a bold experiment is now a movement, with farms in Devon, Gloucestershire and Pembrokeshire. More than 120,000 young people have lived as farmers for a week — feeding hens and pigs at dawn, milking in the early light, growing and cooking their own food, and walking fields that stretch far beyond the classroom.

Elsewhere, War Horse returns to the Royal National Theatre this spring —the most successful production in its history —and has now been seen by almost 9 million people.

He remembers the nerves of that first preview in 2007. “I’d seen it, and I knew it was too long,” he admits. A small puppet, perched on a table and newly arrived from South Africa, hardly inspired confidence. “I thought, this is ridiculous — it’s a pantomime horse. It’s not going to work.”

The defining moment came early in the show. “You’re five, ten minutes in,” he recalls. “It’s a boy and his horse in Devon before the First World War.” Then, in a heartbeat, the foal transforms into a full-grown horse: “more horse than a horse.” In that instant, he knew this was one of British theatre’s most phenomenal creations. “That was when I realised something wonderful was going to happen…” Surrounded by seasoned industry professionals, he was overwhelmed. “I was in bits, tears pouring down,” he says, smiling. “All these cynical people — they weren’t coping either.”

Private Peaceful is devastating, but full of warmth, humour, and love. I ask him how important it is that this new production preserves that balance. “Sadness is fine,” he says. “It’s important. It’s part of life. It was important to make it human, so that the friendships between people, families and homes, are there. There’s a solid base for them to understand the story, and the most important thing, for children reading about this kind of a tragic situation, is that there’s hope.”

We go on to talk about the fourth anniversary of the Russian bombs falling on Ukraine. A conflict that has turned tens of thousands of Ukranian civilians into soldiers overnight. He reflects: “History is never behind us,” he says. “Well, I hope they remember,” Morpurgo says quietly. “Not just in a ceremonial, poppy-wearing way (that has its place) but in an authentic way. These were real people. Real lives lost. Real families devastated. Whole societies shaken. War is a kind of madness,” says Morpurgo.

As our time runs out, I ask what he hopes audiences carry with them as the lights fade up.

He pauses.

“I’d like audiences to leave thinking: we must not let this happen again. But it does mean we have to try, constantly, to shape it differently. To understand one another better. To build something kinder. That’s what remembrance should be for.”

“I wouldn’t say I hope you enjoy Private Peaceful,” he adds. “I hope you carry it with you. I don’t think you’ll forget it.

This is his anthem for peace and humanity.

Private Peaceful 2026 tour will visit venues nationwide

War Horse runs 16 May until 30 July at the National Theatre