Piers Torday: I wanted to write about talking animals

Where did the idea for The Last Wild and its sequel The Dark Wild come from?

The truth of where ideas come from is complex and sometimes it’s only with hindsight do you see they come from multiple places. So I have two answers. I started writing a TV sitcom about a family living on a farm.

A colleague suggested making the farm animals talk. When he said that, it was a lightning bolt in my brain and I realised I didn’t want to do anything about a farm or a sitcom. I wanted to write a story for children about talking animals, a story about the environmental chaos we’re in. The other reason is that when I was 12 years old I went on a summer holiday with my best friend to a tiny Scottish island.

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