Helen Macdonald

Writer, poet and historian Helen Macdonald introduces her story of the taming and training of a goshawk in a book that is destined to become a classic of nature writing. It is a multi-layered work – the story of the taming of a goshawk, and of a spiritual journey and of a coming to terms with grief, and also a biography of the brilliant and troubled novelist T H White.

Macdonald was determined to become a falconer from the age of seven. She read all the books, including T H White’s masterpiece, The Goshawk, in which he describes his struggle to train a goshawk as a spiritual contest. When her father died, Macdonald became obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk, buying Mabel for £800 on a Scottish quay and setting out to train her at her Cambridge home.

Macdonald’s other works include Falcon and Shaler’s Fish.

In association with The Woodstock Bookshop.