When it comes to how he spends his earnings from the book, it is not so much a case of wild living, more rewilding.
“Well, I pay the rent a bit better than I used to,” he surmises, “But I’m in the same house wearing the same old jumper,” he adds, before revealing his one big extravagance – planting 2,000 trees in Suffolk.
“I’ve become obsessed with trees. I’ve bought some land and I just can’t stop. Even on the train here I was looking up buying some alder trees, some red alder.
“Some bird cherry trees, because it brings the land alive. This land was very silent when I got it, now it’s full of butterflies and bees. It’s wild. I can sit there and go, ‘Look at all this. This wasn’t here before.’
“There’s an emptiness to living in a certain way, and if you can just do something that might help someone somewhere or do something for the environment. To give back in some way is a good thing.”
I gently ask if part of his motivation is to replace the some of the vast number of trees which must have been cut down to produce the millions of copies of The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, which have sold.
“I can’t believe you’ve said that,” he laughs with mock incredulity.
“I’m doing it because I love it and it’s a good thing. Trees live longer than we do and we know that they are good for the Earth. And they are beautiful. They just take a while.”
This is said by someone who should know, Mackesy having found overnight success shortly before turning 60.