Big Read: H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

Helen Macdonald’s powerful and beautifully written account of her relationship with her goshawk Mabel was a Sunday Times best seller, winner of the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction, Costa Book of the Year in 2014 and is now also a major film. A multi-faceted story about love, loss and grief, Macdonald’s book also explores the dark understory in TH White’s book, The Goshawk, and forces us to ask over and over again whether the wild and the wilderness are really outside us, or are they just as much the often unexplored hinterland of what lies within.

Sue Boyle is Society Stanza Representative and organiser of the Stanza 25 workshops in Bath. Author of Too Late for the Love Hotel, Report from the Judenplatz and The Letters from Mexico, Sue has curated many literary events at BRLSI, including the WW1 Commemorative evenings & workshop series for the Cultural Olympiad & the Bicentenary of BRLSI in 2024.

Here’s a few things to think about while you’re reading:

1. Would you describe this book as ‘nature writing’?

2. How would you compare TH White’s relationship with his hawk to Macdonald’s?

3. Is Macdonald’s hawk training simply a journey for her grief?

4. Did the revelations about T. H. White displease you?

5. Is it too late for most of us to establish a genuine connection with the wildness of natural world?