麻豆约拍

Helen Macdonald talks to James Naughtie and readers about her memoir H is for Hawk which won the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction in 2014.

When her father dies and Macdonald is knocked sideways by grief, she becomes obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. She buys Mabel for 拢800 on a Scottish quayside and takes her home to Cambridge.

Since its publication just two years ago, H is for Hawk has already become a classic of nature writing. The book is a record of a spiritual journey - an unflinchingly honest account of Macdonald's struggle with grief during the difficult process of the hawk's taming and her own untaming. At the same time, it's a biography of the brilliant and troubled novelist TH White, best known for The Once and Future King, who also wrote an account of training a goshawk.

Presenter : James Naughtie
Interviewed guest : Helen Macdonald
Producer : Dymphna Flynn

November's Bookclub choice : Kidnapped by RL Stevenson.