Always Remember: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, the Horse and the Storm is the hugely anticipated new book from Charlie Mackesy that revisits his much-loved world.
This December, Mackesy celebrated the launch of the second book with two evenings of live drawing and storytelling at The Barbican, accompanied by music from composer Isobel Waller-Bridge.
Mackesy’s first book, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, published in 2019, was an instant success, holding the record for the most consecutive weeks in the Sunday Times Non-Fiction Chart across all formats, as well as having the longest-running Sunday Times Non-Fiction Number One of all time.
Each character brought something different to Mackesy’s wonderland of watercolour. The boy, resembling the author, is curious and inquisitive.
The mole, on the other hand, really (really) loves cake. But the fox is more reserved, reflecting his hurt. And the horse offers worldly wisdom to his kind-hearted friends.
Mackesy quietly stepped out from behind the curtain. His iPad, linked to a giant projector, showed everything he drew or wrote instantly. With it, he jotted down a simple message admitting he was a little scared – understandable when you have gone from sketching alone at your kitchen table to speaking in front of 2,000 people at The Barbican.
The self-proclaimed ‘grubby artist’ from Northumberland praised the NHS, hated on homework, and addressed the life events that shaped him in a series of gentle anecdotes.
Isobel ‘Iso’ Waller-Bridge accompanied Mackesy on the stage, alongside a quartet, which created a conversational alchemy to Mackesy’s classically styled melodies.
The artist-turned-author spoke about his characters as parts of himself. He introduced them with sketches, before casually erasing them, only to doodle a new one on the next slide.
The audience were invited to draw along as Mackesy, a two-time university-dropout, taught everyone on how to draw marvellous moles and fabulous cakes.
And in true mole-style, the audience were urged to bring sweet treats for the intermission. As it turns out, cakes- with their many layers- are just like books.
The 2022 animation based on Mackesy’s first book is still available on BBC iPlayer, the film was created over two years by 120 animators collaborating on Zoom.
Mackesy described imagining the characters’ voices and assembling the cast. The animation went on to win four Annie Awards, a BAFTA and an Academy Award.
Sharing on Instagram to his millions of followers, Mackesy once admitted to hiding in a bathroom before the Oscar nominees’ lunch. When Elizabeth Olsen and Pedro Pascal presented him and producer Matthew Freud the award for best animated short film, he fist-pumped the air, before apologising (twice) in typical British-fashion.
During the speech, he addressed the bravery of filmmakers, but made sure to apologise again to his dog, whom he had left in the hotel room to collect the award.
Much has changed for him between the first and second books. Mackesy has lost Barney, the cake-loving dachshund who inspired the mole, as well as his mother. Not to mention the devastating theft of his iPad, a debacle that lost him years worth of ideas and drawings.
Yet as he watches the trees he planted in Suffolk grow, so too has he watched this new book take root, even if the process has tested his patience.
And if you take nothing else away from Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, the Horse and the Storm, remember: “Carrot cake is not cake!”
Join the discussion