Michael Morpurgo lives in Devon with his wife Clare. He writes his books from home and helps Clare to run Farms for City Children, a project that takes children from inner-city schools to the countryside where they are given hands-on experience of what happens on a farm.

Michael has written over 50 books - all different, all exciting - and he draws on a lot of his own experiences. He was sent away to boarding school, which he hated because he was homesick and because there was no privacy, and these are experiences that he draws on in The Butterfly Lion and The War of Jenkin's Ear. He didn't work especially hard at school but he was very good at games, and this helped him to keep out of trouble!

When Michael left school he went into the army, which he also hated. He left as soon as he could and trained to be a teacher. Michael loved teaching, especially poetry, which he discovered through the poems of Ted Hughes.

He stopped teaching to become a full-time writer when he started the farm. He writes sitting propped up on the bed, with a thin pen on lined paper which he fills as much as possible as he hates turning over and starting a new page! He hates rewriting stories and he hates making corrections.