I married Clare when we were just 19 - ridiculous, really, but here we are 45 years later. I was in the Army, but left soon after and needed a home and a job. It was the summer of 1963, and I found work teaching in a boys’ prep school in West Sussex, even though it was not long after I had been in a classroom myself. We found a thatched cottage to rent for £5 a week.

The cottage was in Rogate, near Petersfield, close to the Hampshire/ Sussex border and about 500yd from the nearest house. The house had beams so you had to bend your head, and everything was very small. It had a tiny sitting room with an open fire and a tiny kitchen where my wife did lots of cooking. One of my favourites was pork chops in mushroom soup, which sounds bizarre, but was delicious. You fried the chops in french mustard and added a tin of Campbell’s soup. We ate like students: lots of salads and pasta, particularly macaroni cheese, which I’m glad to say Clare still makes. And we had a good butcher in Liss, where we used to buy extraordinary meat pies.

There was a steep staircase out of the sitting room, with one bedroom to one side and two bedrooms to the other, but you had to walk through one to reach the next. There was a small bathroom: Clare tells me I used to do the washing in the bath. It wasn’t until our next flat that we had the luxury of a large Bendix washing machine, which sounded like a thunderstorm in full flow.

The cottage also had a little study with a tiny writing bureau that was impossible to sit at. The bedroom was the best place to work, and I wrote my first story there. It was no good at all. I was just doodling stories – I didn’t know I could do it and had no intention of becoming a writer.

Our first child was born the following year, which meant the beginning of domesticity: pram in the garden, washing on the line. We gave all our children Shakespearian names: Sebastian, Horatio and Rosalind. Life was Shakespearian – we had a dog called Puck and when we found two cats living wild in our log shed, we adopted them, naming them Snug and Bottom.

The cottage was furnished when we moved in, so we took only one or two bits and pieces of our own. There was a phone, black and heavy, the kind you now see in antique shops. I think they call them “retro phones”. The number was Rogate 14. It was like having a personalised number. When you picked up the phone, you spoke to an operator who knew who you were. They probably heard everything.

Everything that happened first happened there. We used to walk with the pram down the country lanes, sometimes to the village of Rogate. We’d also visit a nearby village called Rake, which had a lovely church. We didn’t go down to the sea very often, but we would walk on the Downs.

I had a Mini van that used to rattle over the roads in Goodwood and I had my first car accident there. I got my wheels stuck in some gravel and turned the car over. We lost the dog for a night because he ran off scared, but we found him the next day. Nobody was badly hurt, but I had a knock on my forehead and my nose was badly bruised. At school the next day, one little boy looked up and fainted.

I taught everything and anything. I fumbled my way through, but I had a feeling that I could do this. The first thing to learn is to hold the children’s attention – it was pretty galumphing to begin with, but an interesting start.

This was like my gap year – it was before I went to university – but, unlike most, I was married. I knew I needed a degree and I was trying to work out what I was going to do with my life. Today, young people have a sense of the power of choice from a young age. The world’s their oyster. The choice is huge, but it wasn’t then.

After a year at Rogate, I was offered a place at King’s College London and we moved to a flat in Hampstead. Then I became a serious teacher at a state primary school and learnt that the best way to hold the attention of 35 Year 6s was to read them a story. So, from 3pm to 3.30pm every day, that’s what I did. And it’s what every teacher should be doing now – not to ask questions on it later, or to do comprehension, just so they can listen.

One day, I realised I had lost their attention. Clare suggested that I tell them one of my own stories. The writing followed from there.

The Morpurgos founded Farms for City Children (www.farmsforcitychildren.org ). An adaptation of War Horse is at the National Theatre, London SE1, until Jan 24

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