AUTHOR Michael Morpurgo kept an audience of pupils and teachers enthralled when he spoke at the Royal Masonic School for Girls last week.

Michael is one of the country's best selling writers for children and young people and was the Children's Laureate from 2003 to 2005.

He was guest of honour at the Rickmansworth school's preparatory department's prize day, after Year 5 pupils wrote to him asking him to visit the school.

As part of a "persuasive writing" exercise the girls were asked to write a letter to their headmistress, Linda Beckett, to persuade her to abolish the school uniform.

The pupils were unsuccessful, but were then set another challenge to convince a top writer to come to the school on prizegiving day.

They succeeded in getting Michael, who is a father-of-three and has written more than 100 books, to visit.

His books include The Butterfly Lion, Farm Boy and Billy Kid.

During his visit to the Rickmansworth school, Michael told teachers and pupils that as a child he hated writing, but, thanks to an inspirational teacher, overcame this dislike.

Then when he was working in a primary school in Kent he had to read stories to pupils every day.

He said: "My lot were bored by the book I was reading. I decided I had to do something and told them the kind of story I used to tell my kids - it was like a soap opera, and they focused on it. I could see there was magic in it for them, and realised there was magic in it for me."

The pupils at the school have produced a book of their own writing, which features articles, stories and illustrations. They presented a copy of this to Michael to take away with him, and also got him to sign a copy of their book, which now takes pride of place in the school library.

Michael was recently awarded on OBE in the Queen's 80th Birthday Honours List in recognition of his services to literature.

He said: "I know that it must have been some of my readers who recommended me for this huge honour and that's what pleases me most because the books have meant so much to so many children. I'm looking forward, like Alice, to going to the palace for cake and a gong!"