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Helen Macdonald on H is for Hawk and the Film Adaptation
Macdonald discusses the enduring power of H is for Hawk around the release of its film adaptation.
Quick facts
Nature · Cultural History
Falcon
Part of the Reaktion Books ‘Animal’ series, Falcon traces the cultural history of falcons and falconry across millennia — from ancient Egyptian and Mongolian hunting traditions to the bird’s role in medieval aristocracy and modern conservation. It draws on Macdonald’s own background as a professional falconer as much as on scholarship.
Written years before H is for Hawk made her famous, Falcon shows the research and hands-on falconry expertise that would later ground her memoir in real, physical knowledge rather than sentiment. It’s a slim, dense, scholarly book, and a useful reminder that Macdonald was a historian of science first.
MemoirOn my shelf
H is for Hawk
After her father’s sudden death, Macdonald bought and trained a goshawk named Mabel, one of the most notoriously difficult birds to work with in falconry. The memoir braids that intense, often violent process of training Mabel with grief, and with a parallel account of T. H. White, the troubled author of The Goshawk, who attempted the same thing decades earlier and failed badly.
H is for Hawk won the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Costa Book of the Year and made Macdonald’s name for good reason: it refuses to soften either the brutality of falconry or the ugliness of grief. The White material gives the book a second, sadder register, showing what happens when someone tries the same escape and doesn’t find their way back.
Essays
Vesper Flights
A collection of essays on the nonhuman world, ranging from mass migrations of songbirds watched from the Empire State Building to the tribulations of farming ostriches to Macdonald’s own private vespers while trying to fall asleep. The pieces move between memoir, natural history, and cultural commentary, including essays on immigration and nostalgia refracted through nature.
Where H is for Hawk had one overwhelming subject, Vesper Flights lets Macdonald’s curiosity range freely, and the results show a writer as good at the short form as the long one. It’s the book to read if you want more of her sentence-level precision without another grief memoir.
Frequently asked questions about Helen Macdonald’s books
From the bookshelf
“Hands are for other hands to hold. They should not have to do the work of the heart.”
— Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk
For more nature writing that refuses easy comfort, browse the full shelf.
