Such Stuff: A Story-Maker's Inspiration by Michael Morpurgo
In the ensuing attack, there was little time to launch lifeboats. With many trapped below deck, hundreds of sailors and soldiers went down with their ships. Some jumped into the sea, but most drowned, weighed down by their uniforms, or hampered by badly fitted lifebelts. Hundreds died in the attack, among them many irreplaceable specialist engineers. The loss of the three LSTs (landing ships for tanks) meant that there were fewer reserve boats for the actual D-Day landings in Normandy, less than two months later.
An overwhelming worry was that ten of the senior officers on the torpedoed ships knew the details of the invasion plans. If any of them had been taken prisoner by the Germans, all the invasion plans might be at risk. After huge efforts to recover corpses from Lyme Bay, the bodies of all of these officers were identified, but many of the hundreds who died were laid in unmarked graves in Devon.
All survivors were sworn to secrecy at the risk of court martial, and the invasion of Normandy went ahead successfully. Ironically, more lives were lost during the dress rehearsal at Slapton Sands than on Utah beach during the real invasion.
In the 1970s, a guesthouse owner, Ken Small, was told by a local fisherman about a metal object sunk three-quarters of a mile offshore. This turned out to be an American Sherman tank. Small managed to arrange for the tank to be salvaged and a special service was held at Slapton Village Church, where a memorial plaque to those who lost their lives during the D-Day practice landings was unveiled. It was not until 2012 that an official American memorial plaque to the 946 dead was erected, not on Slapton Sands, but at Utah Beach, in Normandy. Many residents of Slapton Sands never returned to their homes and farms and those who did often found them bombed or damaged. But one special resident did return – Aldolphus Tips, a local cat!
I Believe in Unicorns
THE DREAM
I am not sure when I first saw the cartoon. Probably in a book of cartoons or a magazine in a dentist’s waiting room or maybe it was a doctor’s, but anyway, it was when I was young. I think it was in a magazine called Punch. I was flipping through it, looking at the pictures, when I came across a small sad drawing, a cartoon that I have never forgotten. It was of a couple of unicorns, standing abandoned, on a small rock in the sea, all that remained above water of a mountaintop, the world flooded all around them, and Noah’s ark floating away into the distance. That image stayed in my head as I was growing up, as I was trying to work out how true these ancient biblical stories I was hearing and reading were, or how metaphorical.
In time, of course, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species made it all clear to me, that creatures – ourselves too – have evolved and adapted, that those who were strong or clever had far better chances of survival. Others, I knew, had been hunted to extinction, or died out as a result of some cataclysmic event, dinosaurs and mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers among them. But unicorns were unique. Unicorns for me were always fabulous, in both senses of the word, but lived on in my hopes and dreams on the cusp of reality and fantasy. And while I might have realized quite early on that unicorns were imaginary, legendary, I had always harboured a childish hope that they might have once existed, which was why, I suppose, that little cartoon had resonated so much with me, why I could not get it out of my mind. Here, at least, was a credible biblical explanation of their extinction – they had existed, but the last of them had died in the Great Flood. They had simply missed the boat.
So unicorns have always fascinated me, whether it was the sight of a unicorn opposite a lion in a royal crest – symbols of purity and strength respectively – or a unicorn woven into an ancient tapestry, sitting at the feet of a princess, symbol again of purity, of all that is virtuous and true. And then I came across, quite by accident, a unicorn’s horn. A real unicorn’s horn. It was in Paris. I was visiting a museum there, the Musée de Cluny, to see again these glorious “La Dame à la licorne” tapestries that I love. There she was, the princess, her faithful unicorn at her side, in a meadow landscape of grass and wildflowers and trees, with all manner of wild creatures about her, rabbits, deer, birds. I stood marvelling at the beauty of it again for a while, then wandered away, through one great chamber in the museum to another. That was when I saw the unicorn’s horn, leaning up against a wall in a corner of a room, about three metres long, made of ivory, tapering in a perfect spiral to a perfect point.
I later learnt that these horns were rare and therefore very valuable and much prized, an essential artefact in any respectable king’s treasure, evidence of great wealth and status. They were found washed up on beaches, and thought in ancient times to be evidence that unicorns really existed. Much later, it was discovered that these horns were, in fact, the tusks of a narwhal – actually not tusks at all, but rather strangely extended teeth used for ice-breaking in the Arctic North where they live.
All this simply served to fuel my passion for these mythical creatures, and none of this dampened my lingering hope that maybe, just maybe, unicorns might once have roamed the Earth, and might somehow have been transformed into, evolved into, narwhals. Well, why not? I thought. Did we not once crawl up out of the sea? So the opposite could happen, surely. Fantastical, I know, but that is the “stuff dreams are made on”! However absurd, I wanted to believe in unicorns, and believe in them absolutely.
There are, of course, many different ways a child can grow up to love stories and poems. Sometimes – most often, perhaps, as with me – it is a mother or father who reads to a child at bedtime. With some poems that I read even now – “The Listeners” by Walter de la Mare, “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll, “The Way Through the Woods” by Rudyard Kipling – I can hear my mother’s voice in my head as I read. She read them over and over to us. They were passed on with love. Then, if we are lucky, there is a great and inspiring teacher who gifts us a passion for literature, not simply because literature is in the curriculum, but, as the great poet W. B. Yeats says, for that teacher, “Because a fire was in my head”. Such teachers, and there are very many of them, are never pretending. They mean it, and we know they mean it. They know how enriching to our lives is the power of great stories and poems, how literature is one of the great pathways to knowledge and understanding.
We know the best parents and the best teachers do this, change lives. So often forgotten are the best librarians, those dedicated people who go quietly about their business of trying to encourage reading. For many children who are not read to at home, or who have been frightened off books, or bored by them, at school, a good library and good librarian can change the life of a child, by judicious and sensitive recommendations, by arranging book groups, by readings, by inviting authors in to talk to children. Like so many of my fellow writers, this is how I have come across so many librarians, as an invited author, reading to children who sit there in their anoraks, expectant, cross-legged on the floor, covering the carpet from bookshelf to bookshelf. The librarian knows and I know that maybe for one of those children sitting there, to whom books have always been boring, life might suddenly be transformed. Maybe that child will love a story for the first time, and become a reader for life, or a writer. Librarians, for me, are the unsung heroes in all this. Which is partly why I found myself one day writing about a librarian who was to become, most definitely, the hero of my story.
I have so often found that if I leave the door open, and do not force myself to contrive a story just because I think it’s a good idea, then sooner or later, something, someone, some happening nudges me, gives me the opportunity to sit down at last and tell the story that has been evolving in my head for so long. And the more unexpected and remarkable these happenings are, the better it is for my story. I have such a happening to tell you. A few years ago, I was invited along with my friend, the poet Kevin Crossley-Holland, to go to Moscow to talk to librarians and teachers and students. I had never been to Russia before and was honoured to be asked. Hundreds of librarians were coming, I was told, from all over Russia, to hear talks given by writers from many different countries. It was a gathe
It was a prize-giving dinner. Twenty or so of these four hundred selected librarians were apparently prize-winners. One by one, and to great applause, each went up to receive a public accolade and was then presented with a scroll to take away. Of course, the prize-giving was in Russian, which I didn’t understand, and it all took a rather long time, as these things often do. So if I’m honest I found it all rather boring. I was pleased, as we all were, I think, when we came at last to the final prize-winner of the evening – so my Russian host explained. As his name was announced, 400 librarians rose to their feet as one, clapping and huzzah-ing and banging their tables, as a diminutive man in an ill-fitting suit made his way slowly to the podium. He was cheered all the way. I turned to my host and asked who he was, why everyone was so especially enthusiastic about this prize-winner.
“Ah,” she said, “this man is the most famous librarian in all of Russia.” “Why?” I asked. She explained. “He is a librarian in a small town two thousand miles away. One day, a few years ago, his library caught fire. And do you know what he did, this man? Against the advice of the fire brigade, he went in and out of that library, rescuing books from the flames. The townspeople were so inspired by his courage that they too joined in. Some went in and out with him, coming out with armfuls of books. Others made a line across the square and they passed the books from hand to hand. Tens of thousands of books were saved, until the firemen finally stopped them, telling them it was just too dangerous to go into the building any more. Later, in the square, with the library now almost completely destroyed, the librarian told the people that they had to take the books home and look after them, until a new library was built – and it has been now – and then they should all bring their books back. And that is what happened. And that is why he is being given the first prize this evening. He is everyone’s hero.”
I was not bored any more. Here was a man who loved books and who had risked his life to save them. There is a story, sadly a true story, of a time in Nazi Germany when books that were not approved by the Nazi authorities were gathered together in a huge pile and burnt in public. Here I had heard the opposite story, of books being saved from the flames, great books, beloved books, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, religious books, history books, art books, scientific books, all saved, because that man knew how important books are to us all, as individuals, as a society.
Now began the weaving process I love so much, that dreamtime during which I don’t write a word, but rather walk the lanes near my home talking my story out loud, weaving it as I go. Sheep are great listeners, cows less so, I find. So I had a unicorn, a librarian, and a little boy quite like I had been, who didn’t much like books or school, who preferred always to be outside. It wasn’t difficult to become him. Tomas, I called myself. I like to be out in the mountains with my bee-keeping father. But my mother thinks that maybe I should go to the library to listen to a story. Be good for me, she says. Something different. Set it, I thought, in the Balkans, in Croatia, maybe, or Bosnia, where a brutal civil war had been raging at the time. And somehow weave in the story of the unicorn left behind by the ark, and the story of the burning books in Nazi Germany. Weave it all in, I thought, and mean every word of it in the telling, as a parent might do when reading aloud to a child, or a teacher, or a librarian. And above all, as you write it, believe in that unicorn.
I BELIEVE IN UNICORNS
One afternoon the unicorn lady took out from her bag a rather old and damaged-looking book, all charred at the edges. It was, she told us, her very own copy of The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen. I was sitting that day very close to the unicorn lady’s feet, looking up at the book. “Why’s it been burnt?” I asked her.
“This is the most precious book I have, Tomas,” she said. “I’ll tell you why. When I was very little I lived in another country. There were wicked people in my town who were frightened of the magic of stories and of the power of books, because stories make you think and dream; books make you want to ask questions. And they didn’t want that. I was there with my father watching them burn a great pile of books, when suddenly my father ran forward and plucked a book out of the fire. The soldiers beat him with sticks, but he held on to the book and wouldn’t let go of it. It was this book. It’s my favourite book in all the world. Tomas, would you like to come and sit on the unicorn and read it to us?”
I had never been any good at reading out loud. I would always stutter over my consonants, worry over long words. But now, sitting on the magic unicorn, I heard my voice strong and loud. It was like singing a song. The words danced on the air and everyone listened. That same day I took home my first book from the library, Aesop’s Fables, because the unicorn lady had read them to us and I’d loved them. I read them aloud to my mother that night, the first time I’d ever read to her, and I could see she was amazed. I loved amazing my mother.
Then one summer morning, early, war came to our valley and shattered our lives. Before that morning I knew little of war. I knew some of the men had gone to fight, but I wasn’t sure what for. I had seen on television tanks shooting at houses and soldiers with guns running through the trees, but my mother always told me it was far away and I wasn’t to worry.
I remember that moment. I was outside. My mother had sent me out to open up the hens and feed them, when I looked up and saw a single plane come flying in low over the town. I watched as it circled once and came again. That was when the bombs began to fall, far away at first, then closer, closer. We were all running then, running up into the woods. I was too frightened to cry. My father cried. I’d never seen him cry before, but it was from anger as much as fear.
Hidden in the woods we could see the tanks and the soldiers all over the town, blasting and shooting as they went. A few hours later, after they had gone, we could hardly see the town any more for the smoke. We waited until we were quite sure they had all gone, and then we ran back home. We were luckier than many. Our house had not been damaged. It was soon obvious that the centre of town had been hardest hit. Everyone seemed to be making their way there. I ran on ahead hoping and praying that the library had not been bombed, that the unicorn lady and the unicorn were safe.
As I came into the square I saw smoke rising from the roof of the library and flames licking out of the upper windows. We all saw the unicorn lady at the same moment. She was coming out of the library carrying the unicorn, staggering under its weight. I ran up the steps to help her. She smiled me her thanks as I took my share of the weight. Her eyes were red from the smoke. Between us we set the unicorn down at the foot of the steps, and she sat down exhausted, racked with a fit of coughing. My mother fetched her a glass of water. It must have helped because the coughing stopped, and all at once she was up on her feet, leaning on my shoulder for support.
“The books,” she breathed. “The books.”
When she began to walk back up the steps I followed her without thinking.
“No, Tomas,” she said. “You stay here and look after the unicorn.” Then she was running up the steps into the library, only to reappear moments later, her arms piled high with books. That was the moment the rescue began. People seemed suddenly to surge past me up the steps, and into the library, my mother and father amongst them.
It wasn’t long before a whole system was set up. We children made two chains across the square from the library to the café opposite, and the books everyone rescued went from hand to hand, ending up in stacks on the floor of the café. The fire was burning e
Book censorship
Governments, and those with power, have often used censorship and suppression of art and literature to try to control the general population. In Nazi Germany, a massive propaganda campaign was orchestrated to win the loyalty and cooperation of Germans. The Propaganda Ministry took control of all forms of communication. Viewpoints in any way threatening or contradicting the beliefs of the regime were eliminated from all media. This escalated into planned book burning.
On 10 May 1933, Nazis raided libraries and bookstores across Germany. They marched by torchlight in night-time parades, chanted slogans, and threw books into huge bonfires. More than 2,500 authors were on the banned list. Authors such as Jack London, H. G. Wells and Leo Tolstoy were amongst those whose works were destroyed. These actions shocked the world, with people recalling Heinrich Heine’s prophetic words: “Where they burn books, they will in the end burn people.”
A more recent example of book burning to destroy ideas, and a culture, comes from the Bosnian war. In the capital, Sarajevo, Muslims, Christians and people of other faiths had lived together in harmony for centuries. The siege of Sarajevo by the Serbian National Army began in 1992. The city would suffer for four years, the longest siege in modern warfare. By the time the peace accord was signed, 250,000 people in Bosnia, mainly civilians, had been killed. The war had created two million refugees. And, in Sarajevo alone, more than two million books were burnt, lost or destroyed.