Saturday, October 31, 2009

My hero / Ted Hughes by Michael Morpurgo

Ted Hughes


My hero Ted Hughes

Michael Morpurgo
Saturday 31 Octuber 2009


I
first met Ted Hughes down by the River Torridge in Devon where he was fishing. He was already by this time a huge literary hero of mine. As a teacher in junior schools I had listened to his Poetry in the Making with many classes of children, and been inspired with them to turn my hand to writing. There is no better invitation to write than this book. He simply says: we can all do this. We are all storytellers, all poets, it is a question of keeping your eyes and ears open, and your heart too. And listening hard to the music of the words we use.

That meeting down by the river was to change my life profoundly. He was a near neighbour, a great friend, and a huge supporter of Farms for City Children, the educational charity Clare, my wife, and I began over 30 years ago. He believed, as we did, that for a city child the experience of living and working in the countryside could be as life-changing as a great book or a great poem.
We collaborated on a book about the farm, All Around the Year, and from then on regularly showed each other work in progress. Can you imagine how encouraging that was for a young writer still finding his voice? When my children's novel War Horse failed to win the Whitbread prize, he took me out for the day, not to console me, but to tell me that I had written a fine book, and that I would write a finer one.
Shortly before his early death, he and I worked together to create the post of children's laureate, because he believed, as I did, that someone should be out banging the drum and blowing the trumpet for the best of children's literature.
He may be gone, but he and his work remain unforgettable.

THE GUARDIAN







2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson
102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

2012

190 My hero / Iris Murdoch by Charlotte Mendelson
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer

2015
2016



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