"At 6am in the Savoy I’m looking out on the river and listening to hotel noises of crashing bottles and dustbins accompanying the Today programme. At 8.30 I have breakfast in the River Restaurant. I have a glorious array of fruit, muesli and coffee. I might order a grilled kipper. I read The Times with breakfast and the Telegraph in the marble bathroom.

The doormen greet me like a long-lost friend. The staff here are so well trained, not in the least servile, and they all have stories to tell. Yesterday I met a waiter from Samarkand. The world does seem extraordinarily small at the Savoy. My real home is a small thatched cottage, which is part of a farm. Here I’ve been given a suite with three phones. The bedroom is three times and the sitting room twice the size of home. Both have river views. But it’s not hugely posh; it’s comfortable. Clare often stays. I have one complaint: the bed is so wide you can’t find the person you’re sleeping with.

My writing hours are 9.30 to 12.30, in bed. Any longer and I feel the edge going off. Twenty years ago I developed pains in my neck and wrist from sitting at a desk. Ted Hughes, a great friend, said I should stand at an easel. But my feet hurt. Then I saw a picture of my great hero Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa — he was in bed writing, propped up by pillows. He looked so comfortable, I copied him.

Sometimes I get back into my pyjamas to write. The pillows here are amazing and the bed linen very luxurious. I use a Pilot fine pen and exercise books — children send them to me. In a small book you can write what looks like a lot very quickly. Clare, the only person who can read my writing, types it up.

Morpurgo is my stepfather’s name. It’s Jewish, originally from Trieste. My mother was an actor. She had a wonderful voice, and when my brother and I were small she read to us from books she loved — Kipling, de la Mare, Masefield. My favourite book is still the Just So Stories. Apart from Enid Blyton and The Eagle, which were both forbidden at home, I hardly read at all.

I was a hopeless student, feeling constantly under pressure. Then one day I came across Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and the joy of stories flooded back. Ted Hughes was a great encourager of young writers. Years ago I wrote War Horse, which was up for the Whitbread prize. I didn’t win and felt dejected. Ted called me: “Would you like to come out for the day?” Not a word of consolation. Then over tea in Bideford he said: “This prize stuff is nonsense. You’ve written a fine book. One day you’ll write a finer one.” He inspired me to go on writing.

The Savoy’s site, which I’ve traced back to the 13th century, is inspiring too. John of Gaunt wrote here; so did Chaucer. One of my tasks for the hotel is to write a story about Kaspar, its lucky black cat. In 1926 the designer Basil Ionides was commissioned to design Kaspar and carved him from a single piece of plane wood. He lives on a shelf in the Pinafore Room and is only moved if a party of 13 is eating lunch or dinner, when he’s placed on the 14th chair with a napkin round his neck and treated as a bona-fide guest.

My arrangement with the Savoy is bed and breakfast. Lunch is two bouillon cubes from the local Tesco. In Devon I do a three-mile walk after lunch. Here I cycle and swim up and down the pool — it’s the perfect temperature and doesn’t smell of chlorine. I can do a length in 10 strokes. In the afternoon I’ll answer letters, which are mostly from children.

At 4.30 someone brings a plate of tangerines, apricots or other goodies. Later on, a chambermaid will turn down the bed, replace the towels and put chocolates on the pillows. I wouldn’t want to live like this for ever but I do value it. In return I have to inspire three literary events, two of which will raise funds for our charity, Farms for City Children.

Since we started 30 years ago, more than 60,000 children have spent a week living and working on one of our three farms, splashing in puddles and learning where food comes from. Clare and I are still directors, but we’ve handed on the charity to younger people. It hasn’t been easy, but when we started to draw back six years ago, I was delighted to relinquish getting up at 6.30 to milk the cows.

Three times a week I go to restaurants for dinner. Other days it’s something from Tesco’s — our suite has everything, including a fridge. I might have a drink in the American Bar; they don’t mind my big jumper there, though I won’t risk wellies. I have my hair cut once in six months. I arrived looking like a shaggy dog and was directed to the men’s hairdresser in the private road by the entrance. I asked if they could make me five years younger. They did, but it cost considerably more than twice my usual £12 haircut in Exeter.

In Devon at night I shut up the hens. At the Savoy I’m in bed for Newsnight. I’ve been reading Claire Tomalin’s Thomas Hardy biography while Clare sleeps blissfully. The insomniac in me lies there in envy, plotting how, when I have to vacate the suite, I can smuggle the two armchairs into my rucksack."

Michael Morpurgo hosts a children’s tea at the Savoy today from 3.30 to 5.30pm

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