During their sojourn in Penmarron, they had seen quite a lot of her, and she had never been anything but kind.

She was fourteen when her mother and younger sister went back to Columbo to rejoin their father, before his move to Singapore. At fourteen, Judith reckoned that she was mature enough to have really important decisions, that were going to affect her, shared and discussed. The pacing is different, pre-war moves along at a languid pace, but the book picks up speed in the second half as the years roll by.

My 84 year old Nan read this and loved it, my 58 year old Dad read this and loved it so when it was passed on to me, at the time an 18 year old, I did not expect to get beyond the end of chapter one. With his wife Clare, he set up the charity Farms for City Children, which offers children and teachers from inner-city primary schools the chance to live and work in the countryside for a week on one of the charity’s three farms in Devon, Gloucestershire and Wales.

In November 2016 Michael Morpurgo won the J M Barrie Award for his contribution to children’s literature.Michael Morpurgo has thrilled and delighted huge numbers of young readers since becoming a children’s author in the early 1970s," Wood said.