Michael Morpurgo - Author

"We had to read the children a story every day and my lot were bored by the book I was reading. I decided I had to do something and told them the kind of story I used to tell my kids - it was like a soap opera, and they focused on it. I could see there was magic in it for them, and realised there was magic in it for me."

In 1976 Michael and his wife, Clare, started the charity Farms For City Children, which aims to relieve the poverty of experience of young children from inner city and urban areas by providing them with a week in which they work actively and purposefully on farms in the heart of the countryside. They now have three farms - Nethercott in Devon, Treginnis in Wales and Wick in Gloucestershire. "As a teacher I realised many children had little real contact with the world around them - to them the television was real. I wanted them to experience life at first hand."

In the last 30 years, over 50,000 children from cities and towns throughout the UK have spent a week of their lives living and working on one of the three farms. Additionally, Michael is patron to over a dozen separate charities.

Living in Devon, listening to Mozart, and working with children have provided most of the stimulae Michael needs to discover and write his stories. He spends about half his life mucking out sheds with the children, feeding sheep or milking cows; the other half he spends dreaming up and writing stories. "For me, the greater part of writing is daydreaming, dreaming the dream of my story until it hatches out - the writing down of it I always find hard. But I love finishing it, then holding the book in my hand and sharing my dream with my readers."

Michael is a former Children's Laureate. He is one of the most successful children's authors in the country, loved by children, teachers and parents alike.