The author of War Horse explains that although his own faith is tentative he believes in the magic, joy and hope that children bring to Christmas.

You cannot spend an hour with Michael Morpurgo without thinking of the children up and down the country who would love some time in his company. Now 77, the former Children’s Laureate is the author of more than 150 books, which have sold more than 40 million copies.
On a frosty morning in mid-December, we meet in his riverside flat in Fulham. It’s warm, and we cradle cups of coffee. Michael tells me he’s been looking back to a day just before Christmas 1962. He was a Sandhurst cadet on exercise on a freezing Berkshire heath, the sun setting, snow falling. It was the beginning of the coldest winter Britain had known for 200 years. The chill was so bitter that his kidneys ached. Towards dawn, Michael began to hallucinate. Looking out across the white heath, he imagined he was a soldier in a trench in the First World War.
A man in a heavy grey coat was walking towards him, waving a white flag. Suddenly, the Christmas truce of 1914 came vividly alive. Though frozen, Michael felt “warm to my very soul”, and he knew, from that moment, that he must give up the Army and devote himself not to war but to peace.

From Sandhurst, Michael moved into teaching. He began to tell stories to his pupils on Friday afternoons, and was eventually persuaded to write them down. His first book was published in 1974. He hasn’t looked back. Not obviously a peacemaker, you might think, but all his most successful books – Why the Whales Came, Kensuke’s Kingdom, War Horse, Private Peaceful – revolve around themes of reconciliation. “Reconciliation,” he says, “is what I yearn for most.”