Sir Michael Morpurgo, the English author, poet and playwright, has revealed he has been having treatment for cancer and said his grandchildren give him "hope" of combating the disease.

The 74-year-old, who was diagnosed with an early cancer of the larynx last year, said it changed his perspective on life.

Writing in The Spectator, he said: "Friends and family much younger have been ill, and suffered long; some have fallen off the perch younger than I am now. I've been a lucky old parrot."

Paying tribute to his grandchildren, he added: "They were all the hope I needed, lying there in that hospital being healed. It wasn't only the radiotherapy doing the healing."

He was being treated at The Royal Marsden - a hospital dedicated to cancer diagnosis and treatment.