It is coming up to 12 years since the publication of H Is for Hawk, about the historian, writer and naturalist Helen Macdonald’s time spent training a Eurasian goshawk after an intense period of grief. Showered with awards, the book was a runaway hit and sparked a literary trend for shared transformative encounters with animals including cats, dogs, magpies and hares.
This month, H Is for Hawk comes to the big screen in a new adaptation starring Claire Foy. But there is still time to get to know the source material, which tells of the sudden death of the author’s father and how Macdonald, an experienced falconer who had previously trained kestrels and peregrines, took delivery of a temperamental young goshawk named Mabel with the aim of taming her and teaching her to hunt. Macdonald, who is non-binary, is the audiobook’s narrator. Their reading is characterised by introspection, curiosity and flashes of humour as they observe this “spooky, pale-eyed psychopath” who, as well as feeding and flying, likes to play ball with scrunched-up bits of paper.
H Is for Hawk intersperses the author’s adventures with their companion with biographical excerpts on writer TH White whose book, The Goshawk, chronicled his own attempts to train a bird in the 1930s using ancient and cruel methods. Unsurprisingly, Macdonald does a better job and their account of their relationship with the goshawk, which helps to alleviate a grief that feels close to insanity, is deeply affecting. Though the sections on White are diverting, it’s when conjuring the life and character of this extraordinary bird of prey that Macdonald’s prose truly soars.
Available via Penguin Audio, 11hr 5min
Further listening
The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About
Mel Robbins, Audible Studios, 10hr 38min
Robbins, a writer, podcaster and motivational speaker, reads her bestselling self-help book advocating confidence, serenity and letting go of the desire to influence other people and their opinions.
A History of England in 25 Poems
Catherine Clarke, Penguin Audio, 12hr 48min
An eclectic series of poems connecting the English to their past, from the jingoist Agincourt Carol (1415) to John of Gaunt’s This England speech in Shakespeare’s Richard II to Adlestrop, Edward Thomas’s wartime paean to the countryside, as viewed from a train.
