Nicholas Hytner is the Director of the National Theatre, and a theatre, film and opera director. Under his stewardship, the multi-award winning stage adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s novel War Horse was first staged at the National Theatre. He was knighted for services to drama in 2010.
Jeremy Irvine is an actor. He played Albert Narracott in Steven Spielberg’s 2011 film adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s novel War Horse. A keen amateur historian, Irvine has carried out extensive research into the life of Albert Ball since discovering his story whilst filming War Horse, and has written about the fighter pilot’s extraordinary life.
Catherine Johnson is an author and screenwriter. She has written several novels for children and young adults, and co-wrote the screenplay for the 2004 film Bullet Boy. She held the position of Writer in Residence at Holloway Prison, and Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the London Institute, and has mentored African writers in association with the British Council.
Michael Longley has published nine collections of poetry, including Gorse Fires (1991), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award, and The Weather in Japan (2000), which won the Hawthornden Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Irish Times Poetry Prize. In 2001 he received the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, and in 2003 the Wilfred Owen Award. His new collection, The Stairwell, is published this year. He was awarded a CBE in 2010.
Joanna Lumley is an actress, voice-over artist and author. Lumley is an outspoken human rights activist and is an advocate for a number of charities and animal welfare groups. She received an OBE in 1995. She has published a number of memoirs; her most recent, Absolutely, was published in 2011.
Michelle Magorian is an author of children’s books, best known for her first novel, Goodnight Mister Tom, which won the 1982 Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and has been adapted for stage and screen. Her novel Just Henry won the Costa Children’s Book Award in 2008.
Simon Mayo is a broadcaster and author. Mayo is the current presenter of Drivetime on BBC Radio 2, and also he co-presents Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review on BBC Radio 5 Live. He is the author of the Itch series of books for young readers.
Roger McGough is a poet, performer, children’s author and playwright. He presents Poetry Please on BBC Radio 4 and is President of the Poetry Society. A Freeman of the City of Liverpool, he was awarded a CBE in 2004 for services to literature.
Virginia McKenna is an actress, author and wildlife campaigner. McKenna is Co-Founder and Trustee of the Born Free Foundation, an international conservation charity, and supports and is patron of many other charities. She has written books for children and adults. She was awarded an OBE for her services to conservation and the arts in 2004.
Clare Morpurgo, mother of three, grandmother of eight, is the Founder of Farms for City Children, an educational charity that, since its foundation in 1976, has enabled over 100,000 urban children to live and work on one of the charity’s three farms for a week of their young lives. She is co-author with Michael of Where My Wellies Take Me, and has worked with him on his books, and with Farms for City Children, for over forty years.
Kate Mosse is the award-winning author of the Languedoc Trilogy – Labyrinth, Sepulchre and Citadel – as well as four works of non-fiction, three plays and three Gothic novels, including The Taxidermist’s Daughter, published in September 2014. The Co-Founder & Chair of the Board of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction (previously the Orange Prize), she is on the board of the National Theatre, the Executive Committee of Women of the World and is a Patron of the Sussex early music ensemble, The Consort of Twelve. She was appointed an OBE for services to women and to literature in 2013.
Sir Andrew Motion is a poet, novelist and biographer, and was Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2009. He has received numerous awards for his poetry and has published four celebrated biographies, including the authorized life of Philip Larkin, which won the Whitbread Prize for Biography. He was knighted for his services to poetry in 2009.
Cathy Newman presents Channel 4 News. She spent nearly a decade in Fleet Street, latterly with the Financial Times. Since joining Channel 4 News, she has broadcast a string of investigations and high-profile scoops. She also writes about politics for the Daily Telegraph.
Brian Patten came to prominence in the 1960s as one of the Liverpool Poets. He co-wrote the seminal poetry anthology, The Mersey Sound. He has published many acclaimed poetry collections for children and adults. He has been honoured with the Freedom of the City of Liverpool and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of both Liverpool University and John Moores University.
K. M. Peyton is the author of over seventy novels for children and adults. She wrote the much-loved Flambards series, for which she won the 1969 Carnegie Medal and the 1970 Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. In 1979 her Flambards trilogy was adapted as a thirteen-part television series.
James Patterson is the author of some of the most popular series of the past decade, as well as many other bestsellers; including romance novels and stand-alone thrillers. Inspired by his own son, who was a reluctant reader, he also writes a range of books specifically for young readers. James is a founding partner of Booktrust’s Children’s Reading Fund in the UK. In 2010 he was voted Author of the Year at the Children’s Choice Book Awards in New York.
Sir Jonathon Porritt is an environmentalist and writer promoting conservation and sustainable development. He is the Founder and Director of Forum for the Future, Chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, and author of a number of books on Green issues, including the novel, The World We Made. He was awarded a CBE in 2000.
Sir Terry Pratchett is the acclaimed creator of the global bestselling Discworld® series. He is the author of fifty bestselling novels, many of which have been adapted for stage and screen. His books have won many awards, including the Carnegie Medal, and he was awarded a knighthood for services to literature in 2008.
Bali Rai has written numerous books for children and young adults. His first, (un)arranged marriage, won many awards, including the Angus Book Award and the Leicester Book of the Year. It was also shortlisted for the prestigious Branford Boase first novel award. Rani and Sukh and The Whisper were both shortlisted for the Booktrust Teenage Prize.
Dame Gail Rebuck is Chair of the UK arm of Penguin Random House, the world’s biggest publisher. Rebuck was previously Chief Executive of Random House Group UK, a position she held for twenty-three years. In 2001 she received a CBE, and in 2009 was made a Dame.
Chris Riddell is an artist, illustrator and author of children’s books, and political cartoonist for the Observer. His books have won many awards, including the 2001 and 2004 Kate Greenaway Medals, the 2007 Nestlé Smarties Book Prize and the 2013 Costa Children’s Book Award.
Sir Tony Robinson is an actor, comedian, historian and television presenter. He is known for playing Baldrick in the popular television sitcom Blackadder and was host of the archaeology series Time Team. Robinson has written many books for children and has narrated the audiobooks of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld® novels. In 2013 he was knighted for public and political service.
Meg Rosoff is an author. Her first book, How I Live Now, won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, the Printz Award, and the Branford Boase Award, and her second, Just in Case, won the Carnegie Medal in 2006. Her latest book, Picture Me Gone, was shortlisted for the National Book Awards in the USA.
Nick Sharratt has written and illustrated more than forty books for children. He has illustrated around 250 titles for several top children’s authors, most notably Jacqueline Wilson. He has won numerous prizes for his work, and was the official World Book Day illustrator in 2006.
Helen Skelton is a broadcaster, and presented Blue Peter from 2008 to 2013. In 2010 she kayaked the length of the Amazon for Sport Relief, and in 2011 walked a tightrope between the towers of Battersea Power Station for Comic Relief. She was only the second woman to complete the Namibian Ultra-Marathon, and was the first person to reach the South Pole by bicycle. Her first
book for children is published in 2015.
Jon Snow is a journalist and broadcaster. He presents Channel 4 News and has travelled the globe covering world events. Snow was Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University from 2001 to 2008, and has received many awards for his journalism, including the Richard Dimbleby BAFTA award for Best Factual Contribution to Television.
Rory Stewart is a diplomat, traveller, author and MP for Penrith and the Borders. His account of crossing Afghanistan on foot, The Places in Between, was an international bestseller. Occupational Hazards describes his work in Iraq. In 2005 he established the charity Turquoise Mountain in Kabul.
Jonathan Stroud is an author who writes for children and young adults. He is the author of the bestselling Bartimaeus sequence, which is published in thirty-six languages and won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature (2006), the Corinne Award in Germany (2006) and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire (2007). His new series, Lockwood & Co., launched in 2013 to critical acclaim and eleven literary award shortlistings.
Emma Thompson is an actress, comedian, screenwriter and author. She is the only person to have received Academy Awards for both acting and writing, winning the award for Best Actress for Howards End in 1992, and the award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Sense and Sensibility in 1995. In 2012 Thompson wrote The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit to celebrate the 110th anniversary of the publication of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
Alan Titchmarsh is a horticulturalist and broadcaster. He is the author of over fifty books about gardening, several memoirs, and nine novels. He writes for the Sunday Telegraph, Country Life and BBC Gardeners’ World magazine, is the gardening correspondent of the Daily Express and Sunday Express, and presents a regular show on Classic FM. He was appointed MBE in 2000.
Sandi Toksvig is a writer, presenter, comedian, actress and producer. She has written more than twenty books for both children and adults. She hosts both radio and television shows including, The News Quiz on BBC radio. In October 2012 she was made Chancellor of the University of Portsmouth, and in 2014 received an OBE for services to broadcasting.
Dr Rowan Williams is a theologian, poet and author. Williams stepped down from his position as 104th Archbishop of Canterbury on 31 December 2012 and became Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, in January 2013. He is the author on several books of theology and a frequent broadcaster.
Dame Jacqueline Wilson is a children’s author who served as Children’s Laureate from 2005 to 2007. Her books have won many awards and her bestselling titles include The Story of Tracy Beaker and the Hetty Feather trilogy. She has been awarded both an OBE and a DBE. Her 100th novel will be published in 2014.
Caroline Wyatt has been a correspondent and occasional presenter for BBC News for over twenty years. Wyatt joined the BBC in 1991 and became Defence Correspondent in October 2007, and has covered the wars in Kosovo, Chechnya, Georgia, Iraq and Afghanistan. She is a contributor to The Oxford Handbook of War.
About Michael Morpurgo and Ian Beck
Michael Morpurgo has written over 120 books, many of them award-winning. His best-known work, War Horse, was adapted into a multi-Oscarnominated film by Steven Spielberg, and into a widely acclaimed play at the National Theatre.
In 2003 Michael became the third Children’s Laureate, a position he helped to create with the poet Ted Hughes.
With his wife, Clare, he set up the charity Farms for City Children, and for their pioneering work they were both awarded the MBE in 1999.
Ian Beck has worked as a freelance illustrator for many years (producing such notable artwork as the record cover for Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album). Ian turned to writing and illustrating children’s books when his own children were born.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Prose and poetry
Pat Barker, Regeneration (Penguin Books Ltd, 1992), copyright © Pat Barker, 1991. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.
Edmund Blunden, ‘Can You Remember?’ from Selected Poems (Carcanet, 1982). Reprinted by permission of Carcanet Press Limited.
John Boyne, Stay Where You Are and Then Leave (Doubleday, 2013), copyright © John Boyne, 2013. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited.
Theresa Breslin, Ghost Soldier (Doubleday, 2014), copyright © Theresa Breslin, 2014. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited.
Raymond Briggs, ‘Aunties’, copyright © Raymond Briggs, 2014.
Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth (Victor Gollancz, 1933). Included by permission of Mark Bostridge and T. J. Brittain-Catlin, Literary Executors for the Vera Brittain Estate 1970.
Duff Cooper, diary excerpts, copyright © John Julius Norwich, 2014.
Jilly Cooper, Animals in War (Corgi, 1984), copyright © Jilly Cooper, 1984. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited.
Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, ‘Good-bye-ee’ from Blackadder Goes Forth, original script copyright © Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, 1989. The programme based on this script first shown by BBC Television in 1989.
George Davison diary entries, copyright © Jonathan Stroud, 2014.
Carol Ann Duffy, ‘Last Post’ from The Bees (Picador, 2011), copyright © Carol Ann Duffy, 2011. The Christmas Truce (Picador, 2011), copyright © Carol Ann Duffy, 2011 – Reproduced by permission of the author c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd, 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN.
Eleanor Farjeon, ‘Easter Monday (In Memoriam E. T.)’ from First and Second Love (Michael Joseph, 1947). Reproduced by kind permission of the Miss E. Farjeon Wills Trust.
Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong (Hutchinson, 1993), copyright © Sebastian Faulks, 1993. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited.
Anne Fine, The Book of the Banshee (Corgi, 2006), copyright © Anne Fine, 1991, 2006. Reprinted by permission of David Higham Associates Ltd.
Michael Foreman, War Game (Pavilion Books Group Ltd, 1993), copyright © Pavilion Books Group Ltd, 1993.
Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, ‘Breakfast’ from Collected Poems, 1904–25 (Macmillan, 1933), copyright © Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, 1933. Reprinted by permission of Pan Macmillan, London.
Robert Graves, ‘A Child’s Nightmare’ from Complete Poems in One Volume (Carcanet Press, 2000). Reprinted by permission of Carcanet Press Limited and United Agents on behalf of The Trustees of the Robert Graves Copyright Trust.
Seamus Heaney, ‘In a Field’ from 1914: Poetry Remembers, ed. Carol Ann Duffy (Faber & Faber, 2013), copyright © Seamus Heaney, 2013. Reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd.
Ted Hughes, ‘For the Duration’ and ‘The Last of the 1st/5th Lancashire Fusiliers’ from Collected Poems (Faber & Faber, 2003), copyright © The Estate of Ted Hughes, 2003. Reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd.
Jeremy Irvine, The Life of Albert Ball, copyright © Jeremy Irvine, 2014.
David Jones, In Parenthesis (Faber and Faber, 1937), copyright © David Jones, 1937. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. Iain Lawrence, Lord of the Nutcracker Men (Delacorte Press, 2001), copyright © Iain Lawrence, 2001. Excerpt used by permission of the Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC © 2001 and HarperCollins Publishers Ltd © 2002. All rights reserved.
Michael Longley, ‘Harmonica’ and ‘In Memoriam’ from Collected Poems (Vintage, 2007), copyright © Michael Longley, 2006. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.
Rose Macaulay, ‘Many Sisters to Many Brothers’ from Poems of Today (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1915). Reprinted by permission of The Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Rose Macaulay.
Pat Mills, Charley’s War (Egmont, 2010), copyright © Egmont UK Ltd, 2010. Reprinted by permission of Egmont UK Ltd.
Michael Morpurgo, War Horse (Egmont, 2007), copyright © Michael Morpurgo, 1982. Reprinted by permission of Egmont UK Ltd.
Andrew Motion, ‘The Death of Harry Patch’ from The Customs House (Faber & Faber Ltd, 2012), copyright © Andr
ew Motion, 2012; ‘Missing’, copyright © Andrew Motion, 2014.
Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Dead (Doubleday, 1993), copyright © Terry and Lyn Pratchett, 1993. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.
Evadne Price, Not So Quiet (Virago, 1988), copyright © Evadne Price, 1988. Reprinted by permission of A. M. Heath & Co. Ltd.
Herbert Read, ‘To a Conscript of 1940’ from Selected Poetry (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994). Reprinted by permission of David Higham Associates Limited.
E. H. Shepard, Drawn from Memory (Methuen, 1957), copyright © E. H. Shepard, 1957. Reprinted by permission of Methuen.
J. C. Squire, ‘To a Bulldog’ from Poems: First Series (Alfred A. Knopf, 1919), copyright © J. C. Squire, 1919. Reprinted by kind permission of Roger Squire.
Noel Streatfeild, A Vicarage Family (Collins, 1963), copyright © Noel Streatfeild, 1963. Reprinted by permission of A. M. Heath & Co. Ltd.
Images and illustrations
Photo of Oh! What a Lovely War from Northern Stage, Newcastle 2010, directed by Erica Whyman and Sam Kenyon, copyright © photographer Topher McGrillis.
Stanley Spencer, Travoys arriving with wounded at a dressing station at Smol, Macedonia, image copyright © Imperial War Museums (IWM ART 2268).
Image of wounded Punjabi soldier © Imperial War Museums (Q 53887).
Photograph of Albert Ball © Crown: Imperial War Museums (Q 69593)
Images reproduced from the Wipers Times (Conway Publishing edition, 2013).
Image from Blackadder Goes Forth copyright © BBC Photo Library. All rights reserved.
Charles Sargeant Jagger, The Great Western Railway War Memorial, 1922. Image copyright © English Heritage. Reproduced by permission of English Heritage.