Michael Morpurgo was entirely unconvincing in his appearance on Newsnight yesterday.
As someone born in 1943 he seemed representative of those who came to adulthood in the 1960s - lefty, pacifist, internationalist. This was the generation who could not live up to the achievements of their fathers and grandfathers who won victory for British civilisation in two global conflicts. Frustrated by their oedipal inadequacy they have since the mid-1960s reviled that civilisation and its achievements and attempted to smash up its institutions (a process that is still on-going).
Therefore it is ironic that Mr Morpurgo is also the spiritual successor of those "...men who look as if they had done very well out of the war", ransacking the tragedy of the Great War to produce a sales-orientated story of trite sentimentality and then sitting on a national news and current affairs programme in his cardigan-covered plumpness to tell us that the Germans need commemorating as well and that the anniversaries of the next four years should be covered in a sickly internationalist jam where everything is mixed together and boiled up and given a "we were all guilty" label.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-27033633
As someone born in 1943 he seemed representative of those who came to adulthood in the 1960s - lefty, pacifist, internationalist. This was the generation who could not live up to the achievements of their fathers and grandfathers who won victory for British civilisation in two global conflicts. Frustrated by their oedipal inadequacy they have since the mid-1960s reviled that civilisation and its achievements and attempted to smash up its institutions (a process that is still on-going).
Therefore it is ironic that Mr Morpurgo is also the spiritual successor of those "...men who look as if they had done very well out of the war", ransacking the tragedy of the Great War to produce a sales-orientated story of trite sentimentality and then sitting on a national news and current affairs programme in his cardigan-covered plumpness to tell us that the Germans need commemorating as well and that the anniversaries of the next four years should be covered in a sickly internationalist jam where everything is mixed together and boiled up and given a "we were all guilty" label.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-27033633
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