Albert arrives at the camp too late to stop the sale, so he offers to join the cavalry to stay with Joey, but he is too young. However, particularly since the success of the stage version of the book, so many tourists have come to the village of Iddesleigh, where Morpurgo lives, and asked to see the painting in the village hall, that in 2011 Morpurgo commissioned an artist to paint just such an oil painting to hang there. Parents need to know that War Horse uses simple language, meant to display the limited awareness of its animal narrator, to tell a poignant story with a strong anti-war message.

Can you paint the picture of Joey that is described in the ‘Author’s Note’ at the start of the book? When Albert and Joey arrive home, Albert rides Joey into the village and they are welcomed as heroes.Topthorn is a beautiful and imposing black horse who rides alongside Joey at the front of the cavalry.

It formed the basis of both an award-winning play (2007) and an acclaimed film adaptation (2011) by Steven Spielberg. The third inspiration for the book, was an old oil painting that belonged to Morpurgo's wife Clare: "It was a very frightening and alarming painting, not the sort you'd want to hang on a wall.Joey stays with them for as long as possible, not wanting to be alone in the world, but the gunfire and shelling terrify him; he begins to run with no particular direction in mind. And the horse, Hebe, had her head just over the top of the stable, and she was listening; that’s what I noticed, that the ears were going, and I knew she knew that she had to stay there whilst this went on, because this kid wanted to talk, and the horse wanted to listen—this was a two way thing.

The novel also teaches some basic War facts: battles were fought in France; English and American soldiers fought against Germans. Over the course of the conflict, newer and more protective technologies, like armored tanks, replaced cavalry units. Since the early 1980s, Morpurgo has produced no fewer than 50 novels, poetry collections, anthologies, and adaptations, several of which have been adapted into operas, stage plays, and films. Determined to keep Joey, Albert does what he must: His “gentle words and kindnesses of the past” (14) are replaced with shouts and flashes of a whip “whenever [Albert] felt [Joey isn’t] giving it [his] best” (14).In addition to its length and brutality, WWI is notable for its trench warfare—Joey frequently finds himself bogged down in the muddy hellscape of the no-man’s-land between the opposing sides’ trenches, which were often close enough for soldiers to talk to each other from under cover. Morpurgo mentions a fictionalised version of this painting in his 'Author's Note' at the start of the book.