Michael Morpurgo interview

In The Guardian, Mark Lawson talks to Michael Morpurgo ahead of the West End transfer of Nick Stafford's adaptation of his book, War Horse.

Many writers have been encouraged by adaptations of their work to attempt a script of their own. Morpurgo was inoculated by previous experiences. In 1989, he wrote a screenplay of his novel Why the Whales Came, set in the Scilly Isles during the first world war. Curiously, the first word of the title was changed to When. "They seemed to believe that this would make people come to see it," Morpurgo smiles. But despite a cast that included Paul Scofield and Helen Mirren, people didn't. He says it taught him that "dramatic dialogue is inherently different from speech in novels".