Sir Michael Morpurgo: “My mother gave me the magic of storytelling”

I love that image of her reading to you and your brother every night.

And I read somewhere that she really made that a priority to read to you.

And sometimes if I ever feel like I'm failing as a mum, I know that's one thing that I'm getting right is reading to my children every night.

How do you feel that impacted you?

Well, it was the, I would say almost the only really intimate moment we had, my brother Peter and I had with her, was when we used to sleep in the same room.

We grew up slightly separate from the rest of the family, being sort of stepbrothers or half-brothers or whatever.

So we had a room to ourselves and twin beds.

And she would make a point of sitting on his bed one night and my bed the other night.

And from time to time, when we complained, we'd all get in the same bed, and that was rather nice.

I do remember that.

It was a moment of wonder, really, because...

Being an actor, being someone who'd grown up loving stories and poetry, she read beautifully.

She became characters.

And like a painter, she painted the landscape.

So if you're reading a book by Robert Louis Stevenson or something like that, you were immediately in the highlands of Scotland and running away from the redcoats.

It was just, she was very, very good at telling stories or reading stories.

And she had poems which she'd repeated over And the repetition was very good, so we learned about rhythm.

The owl and the pussycat went to sea in a beautiful pea green boat.

They took some honey and plenty of honey wrapped up in a five-pound note.

And I loved that.

I absolutely loved it.

And I think it gave me a sense of the beauty of words, the music in words, and the magic of storytelling.

Sadly, life hasn't changed.

I went then to my school on the Warwick Road, a place called St. Matthias.

It's still there now.