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BBC radio 4 Sunday Aug 1- Morpurgo's Islands of Inspiration

From: Doreen Smith
Date: 01 Aug 2010
Time: 11:42:31 -0500

Review

History being rewritten by some old fart formerly "The Childrens Launderette", informally...er. Michael Morpurgo's teachers told him to use his imagination, he freely admits he had none - but by mutilating historic fact and propaganda plus some hearsay from several hapless over romanticized colonials you can cobble a post imperial lie. Several problems here, masking the English Royal Familiy's greed for land rent and strategic dominance is not revealed in Morpurgo's "research", how remiss? Even a visit to the local museum reveals only another clipped middle-class Home Counties accent avoiding the cold hard facts about the 1835 clearances in Scilly via the Duke of Cornwalls henchmen! Its there in front of you! Now that their heirs are landed tourist fat-cats or alternatively the absentee dispossessed, the myth must be perpetuated, replicated and rendered into episodic distortia. Probably an English Tourism commission. It's doubtful whether Morpurgo would like to try his special brand of "story telling" in the Scottish Islands or another location where historical fact cannot be readily used to prop-up a non talent, the stuff is barely suitable for adults let alone impressionable children.