Background
Mackeson is the son of Sir Harry Mackeson, 1st Baronet, and his wife Alethea Cecil Chetwynd-Talbot.
Mackeson is the son of Sir Harry Mackeson, 1st Baronet, and his wife Alethea Cecil Chetwynd-Talbot.
He was educated at Harrow School, Trinity College, Dublin and Sandhurst.
After serving four years in the Royal Horse Guards, Mackeson went into the City of London. When he left the army, Mackeson found employment running a London bank with strong ties to the Mafia, which Mackeson freely admits. "I ran a Mafia controlled financial institution," he declared in the Guardian.
Since he "did not want to end up under Blackfriar"s Bridge," when the "aggravation" of running a mobbed up bank became too much for him, Mackeson relocated to present day Zimbabwe, which was at the time called Rhodesia and under the control of a white-minority government.
There, Mackeson began a career in smuggling. In order to "curry favor with Mistress
," the Rhodesian authorities arrested him and imprisoned him in the Khami prison camp. Within a day, Mackeson was removed from the prison for inciting a riot.
When the Rhodesian Authorites attempted to extradite him to the United Kingdom, Mackeson punched his guard in the nose while onboard a plane, forcing the plane to land.
When he was finally transported back to the United Kingdom, the judge presiding over the case ruled that it was an illegal extradition—a kidnapping, in essence—and had him freed. Since release, Mackeson has become a writer of books about racing, writing under his own name and also as Rupert Collens. He also writes for the Racing Post and runs a mobile bookshop and art gallery which operates on British racecourses.
Quotations: "I ran a Mafia controlled financial institution,".