Alone on a Wide Wide Sea [Paperback]

"Lyrical and moving, it is one of the former Children's Laureate's best books for years." Amanda Craig, The Times

"His best book in years… I was completely hooked." Kate Kellaway, The Observer Review

"A powerful story." The Guardian Children's Books Supplement

‘Executed with Morpurgo’s distinctive flair. His language remains beautifully clean and clear.’ Waterstone’s Books Quarterly

"[A] very satisfying read… The masterful writing makes the characters come to life on the page… I'm recommending this to adult friends as well as teenagers." Books for Keeps

"Michael Morpurgo strikes gold… this is a life-rewarding novel." Angels & Urchins

"This is storytelling at its best." Primary Times

"Incredibly moving, harrowing and completely unputdownable. A first class story that brings history alive." My Child magazine

"Completely unputdownable." Families Magazine

How far would you go to find yourself? The lyrical, life-affirming novel from the bestselling author of Private Peaceful.

How far would you go to find yourself? The lyrical, life-affirming new novel from the bestselling author of Private Peaceful

There were dozens of us on the ship, all up on deck for the leaving of Liverpool, gulls wheeling and crying over our heads, calling good-bye…
That is all I remember of England.

When six-year-old orphan Arthur Hobhouse is shipped to Australia after WWII he loses his sister, his country and everything he knows. Overcoming enormous hardships with fellow orphan Marty, Arthur is finally saved by the extraordinary people he meets and by his talent for boat-design and sailing. Now he has built a special boat for his daughter Allie – a solo yacht designed to carry her to England in search of his long-lost sister. Will the threads of Arthur's life finally come together?

I was there on the quayside to see Allie take her out for the first time, saw her dancing through the waves, and I knew I'd never built a finer boat.

Orphaned in WWII, Arthur is separated from his sister and sent to the other side of the world. There his extraordinary journey continues as he and his friend Marty survive brutal captivity on a working farm, find a new family with the eccentric Aunty Meg and her animals, and discover their talent for designing yachts.

Sixty years later, Arthur's daughter Allie sets sail single-handed in a yacht designed by her father, determined to find his long-lost sister in England. Can family love stretch across time and the vastness of the oceans? And will the threads of Arthur's life finally come together? --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Multi-award winning author, Michael Morpurgo, is one of Britain's best-loved writers for children and has won many prizes, including the Smarties Prize, The Writers Guild Award and the Blue Peter Book Award for his recent novel, Private Peaceful, which has also had two successful runs as a play devised by Bristol Old Vic. From 2003 to 2005 he was the Children's Laureate, a role which took him all over the UK to promote literacy and reading, and in 2005 he was named the Booksellers Association Author of the Year.

I should begin at the beginning, I know that. But the
trouble is that I don't know the beginning. I wish I did. I do know my name, Arthur Hobhouse. Arthur Hobhouse had a beginning, that's for certain. I had a father and a mother too, but God only knows who they were, and maybe even he doesn't know for sure. I mean, God can't be looking everywhere all at once, can he? So where the name Arthur
Hobhouse comes from and who gave it to me I have no
idea. I don't even know if it's my real name. I don't know the date and place of my birth either, only that it was
probably in Bermondsey, London, sometime in about 1940. The earliest memories I have are all confused somehow, and out of focus. For instance, I've always known I had a sister, an older sister. All my life she's been somewhere in the deepest recesses either of my memory or my imagination - sometimes I can't really be sure which - and she was called Kitty. When they sent me away, she wasn't with me. I wish I knew why. I try to picture her, and sometimes I can. I see a pale delicate face with deep dark eyes that are filled with tears. She is giving me a small key, but I don't remember what the key is for. It's on a piece of string. She hangs it round my neck, and tells me I'm to wear it always. And then sometimes I hear her laugh, an infectious giggle that winds itself up into a joyous cackle. My sister cackles like a kookaburra. She comes skipping into my dreams sometimes, singing London Bridge is Falling Down, and I try to talk to her, but she never seems to be able to hear me. Somehow we're always just out of reach of one another.
All my earliest memories are very like dreams. I know
that none of them are proper memories, none that I could
really call my own anyway. I feel I've come out of half-forgotten, half-remembered times, and I'm sure I've often
filled the half-forgotten times with made-up memories. Perhaps it's my mind trying to make some sense of the unknown. So I can't know for certain where the made-up ones end and the real ones begin. All the earliest childhood
memories must be like that for everyone I suppose, but
maybe mine are more blurred than most, and maybe that's
because I have no family stories to support them, no hard
facts, no real evidence, no certificates, not a single
photograph. It's almost as if I wasn't born at all, that I just happened. Arthur Hobhouse is a happening. I've been a
happening for sixty-five years, or thereabouts, and the
time has come now for me to put my life down on paper.
For me this will be the birth certificate I never had. It's to prove to me and to anyone else who reads it that at least I was here, that I happened. I am a story as well as a happening, and I want my story to be known, for Kitty to know it - if she's still alive. I want her to know what sort of a brother she had. I want Zita to know it too, although she knows me well enough already, I reckon, warts and all. Most of all I want Allie to know it, and for her children to know it, when they come along, and her children's children too. I want them all to know who I was, that I was a happening and I was a story too. This way I'll live on in them. I'll be part of their story, and I won't be entirely forgotten when I go. That's important to me. I think that's the only kind of immortality we can have, that we stay alive only as long as our story goes on being told. So I'm going to sit here by the window for as long as it takes and tell it all just as I remember it.
They say you can't begin a story without knowing the
end. Until recently I didn't know the end, but now I do.
So I can begin, and I'll begin from the very first day I can
be sure I really remember. I'd have been about six years
old. Strange that the memories of youth linger long, stay
vivid, perhaps because we live our young lives more intensely. Everything is fresh and for the first time, and
unforgettable. And we have more time just to stand and
stare. Strange too that events of my more recent years, my
adult years, are more clouded, less distinct. Time gathers
speed as we get older. Life flashes by all too fast, and is
over all too soon.