Helen Macdonald Meet the Author


Helen Macdonald

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magical characters. The BBC have will hope that this will go into the

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sixth decade. Now on BBC News, it is time for Meet

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The Author with Nick Higham. When Helen McDonald's father died

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unexpectedly, she was overwhelmed with grief. Her response was

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unusual. She bought a cost walk, the fierce dust of all hawks and set out

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to train it. She tells the story of the goshawk in a vivid book, in part

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a memoir, in part natural and in part a biography of another writer

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who set out to train a goshawk. Helen McDonald, you started training

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your goshawk who you called Mabel, after the death of your father. Some

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people may find that odd that you reacted by training a killer.

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Absolutely, I can see how that might seem peculiar. But I think what I

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was doing was really running from a world I did not understand any more.

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I saw the goshawk as all the things I wanted to be. She was very

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solitary, self`possessed, a bit full of rage and murderous nurse. These

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are all the things you feel after grief. By associating with her and

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training her, I was interacting with the Demons I was facing. Used to be

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a Falconer but goshawks are difficult to train? They are very

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fractious and nervous birds and famously very deadly birds. French

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Falk ands used to call them the kitchen birds because you could

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catch so much game you could feed a family. What drew you to Falcons and

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hawks generally? I was very young when I became its first with them. I

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thought they were the most perfect things ever made. My parents would

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drag me to zoos and sit in coffee shops while I stared at them for

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hours on end. They were part of who I was. One explanation is in their

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grace and elegance. There is some footage from a recent one show which

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shows how remarkable goshawks are when they fly.

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Throughout woodlands in the UK, there is a fearsome predator, and

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incredibly fast and skilful flyer and if you are their prey, you do

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not stand a chance. One blink and you miss it. The only way to see

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what is going on is with a high`speed camera. They moved with

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tremendous agility. What makes them so hard to train? They are

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particularly wild kind of Hawk. With most birds of prey, once you have

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tamed them, they remain tame without any further need to get used to

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people. Goshawks return to the wild. It is a constant process of exposing

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them to people, the sights and sounds of modern life. That is a

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very stressful and it costing experience but a very rewarding one.

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There are photographs of Mabel and you with Mabel out in the

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countryside around Cambridge where you live. She seems very calm. She

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was an unusually tame goshawk. I prepared myself for a frightening

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monster. She became bizarrely tame. We used to play catch with paper

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balls at night and watched television together. And yet during

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the days, we would go out and I would watch a hunt like a wild

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hawk. She was a strange Bridge between two worlds. You write in

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this book about your own grief. At times, clearly, you were overwhelmed

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by it. You write about the extraordinary challenge of training

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the temp three macro. You also write about a man called T H White who was

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the author of a book about King Arthur, who is now forgotten writer

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but was a significant figure in the last century. He tried himself to

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train a goshawk and failed. Yes. It is a very sad story. One of the

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themes of the book is the way people use nature and animals as mirrors of

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their own needs. TH White's story is a perfect example of this. He was a

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very sad broken man. He struggled with his sexuality and had an

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abusive childhood. He was training with goshawk. He was fighting

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himself. All the things he tried to master, he tried to master in the

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hawk. There is a sense that his story and my story in form each

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other. We were both running from our different Demons. What happened to

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Mabel? The events of the book were six or seven years ago. It took me a

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long time to write this book. Mabel, I flew for many more seasons. She

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went up to a breeding programme and was put in a aviary with a very sexy

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male goshawk. But unfortunately she contracted a horrible disease which

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killed her overnight. It has been the bane of Falk and as for

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centuries, this disease. She is much, much missed. I still have the

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numbered metal ring which she wore on her leg and I keep it in my

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jewellery box at home. Now you have a parrot? I have a parrot which, all

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being said, is a much cuddlier bird than a goshawk. Thank you.

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It was a pretty decent day across the UK. Bar the odd shower it is

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fine for the rest of the evening. Into tomorrow

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