In today’s primary-school curriculum, neither the First nor the Second World War is a compulsory subject. We’re fortunate, then, to have authors such as Michael Morpurgo to fill in some of the gaps. War Horse, his 1982 novel about a horse bought by the British Army for service on the battlefields of the former conflict, has sold 35 million copies; subsequent books, such as The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips (2005) and Finding Alfie (2024), have been praised for how they use similarly intimate narratives to touch on the horrors of the latter.
Now, at the grand old age of 80, Morpurgo’s historical horizons are broadening further. In his new novel, Cobweb, he transports readers of eight years and older to the less familiar territory of the Battle of Waterloo.
As with many of Morpurgo’s novels, the story is told through the eyes of an animal, in this case a young Pembrokeshire corgi, who lives with a widowed Welsh farmer and his doting daughter Bethan: “Bethan loved to talk. I didn’t understand the half of it, of course, but I loved it when she spoke to me.” But Cobweb’s carefree youth ends when Bethan’s new stepmother sells him to a local drover, and he’s put to work herding sheep and cattle to London.
Cobweb’s journey east coincides with Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, and as he travels from village to village, he witnesses the celebrations. Yet he’s a shrewd observer – “I may be a dog, but I know and understand a lot more than people think I do” – and when he reaches London to listen to the story of Jonno, a returning soldier blinded in the battle, Cobweb realises that war has no real victors: “In the end, we came home, some of us… We won, they say. They lost, we say. We all lost, I say. So ring me no more bells.”
As with all his historical novels, Morpurgo provides the skeleton facts, but never slows the plot with the nitty-gritty. “There was a big battle at Waterloo – that’s in Belgium or somewhere – and we won. It’ll be the end of Napoleon. Boney’s a prisoner. He’s finished. It means peace! Peace! Peace at last.” This is typical of the sort of dialogue that Cobweb overhears.
Yet Morpurgo doesn’t shy from reporting war’s brutality, either. As he wrote in this paper earlier this year: “Children want to know, to discover more of the unknown, even if it is disturbing” – which is borne out in Jonno’s accounts of the battle: “There were thousands of them, thousands of us, perhaps more guns gathered together in this battle than ever before on earth… we fought together, fell together. It was a great and terrible slaughter.”
In the end, however, the central theme of Morpurgo’s war stories has always been the longing for peace and reconciliation. And when Cobweb forms an unlikely friendship with a French drummer boy, this touching novel comes to an uplifting close.
Cobweb is published by HarperCollins at £14.99. To order your copy for £12.99, call 0808 196 6794 or visit Telegraph Books
Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.
