Browse content similar to Helen Macdonald. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
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magical characters. The BBC have will hope that this will go into the | :00:00. | :00:00. | |
sixth decade. Now on BBC News, it is time for Meet | :00:00. | :00:08. | |
The Author with Nick Higham. When Helen McDonald's father died | :00:09. | :00:11. | |
unexpectedly, she was overwhelmed with grief. Her response was | :00:12. | :00:18. | |
unusual. She bought a cost walk, the fierce dust of all hawks and set out | :00:19. | :00:29. | |
to train it. She tells the story of the goshawk in a vivid book, in part | :00:30. | :00:38. | |
a memoir, in part natural and in part a biography of another writer | :00:39. | :00:40. | |
who set out to train a goshawk. Helen McDonald, you started training | :00:41. | :01:02. | |
your goshawk who you called Mabel, after the death of your father. Some | :01:03. | :01:09. | |
people may find that odd that you reacted by training a killer. | :01:10. | :01:13. | |
Absolutely, I can see how that might seem peculiar. But I think what I | :01:14. | :01:19. | |
was doing was really running from a world I did not understand any more. | :01:20. | :01:24. | |
I saw the goshawk as all the things I wanted to be. She was very | :01:25. | :01:31. | |
solitary, self`possessed, a bit full of rage and murderous nurse. These | :01:32. | :01:34. | |
are all the things you feel after grief. By associating with her and | :01:35. | :01:40. | |
training her, I was interacting with the Demons I was facing. Used to be | :01:41. | :01:53. | |
a Falconer but goshawks are difficult to train? They are very | :01:54. | :01:58. | |
fractious and nervous birds and famously very deadly birds. French | :01:59. | :02:05. | |
Falk ands used to call them the kitchen birds because you could | :02:06. | :02:10. | |
catch so much game you could feed a family. What drew you to Falcons and | :02:11. | :02:16. | |
hawks generally? I was very young when I became its first with them. I | :02:17. | :02:24. | |
thought they were the most perfect things ever made. My parents would | :02:25. | :02:30. | |
drag me to zoos and sit in coffee shops while I stared at them for | :02:31. | :02:35. | |
hours on end. They were part of who I was. One explanation is in their | :02:36. | :02:39. | |
grace and elegance. There is some footage from a recent one show which | :02:40. | :02:45. | |
shows how remarkable goshawks are when they fly. | :02:46. | :02:51. | |
Throughout woodlands in the UK, there is a fearsome predator, and | :02:52. | :02:54. | |
incredibly fast and skilful flyer and if you are their prey, you do | :02:55. | :03:00. | |
not stand a chance. One blink and you miss it. The only way to see | :03:01. | :03:08. | |
what is going on is with a high`speed camera. They moved with | :03:09. | :03:15. | |
tremendous agility. What makes them so hard to train? They are | :03:16. | :03:21. | |
particularly wild kind of Hawk. With most birds of prey, once you have | :03:22. | :03:26. | |
tamed them, they remain tame without any further need to get used to | :03:27. | :03:34. | |
people. Goshawks return to the wild. It is a constant process of exposing | :03:35. | :03:38. | |
them to people, the sights and sounds of modern life. That is a | :03:39. | :03:44. | |
very stressful and it costing experience but a very rewarding one. | :03:45. | :03:49. | |
There are photographs of Mabel and you with Mabel out in the | :03:50. | :03:53. | |
countryside around Cambridge where you live. She seems very calm. She | :03:54. | :04:01. | |
was an unusually tame goshawk. I prepared myself for a frightening | :04:02. | :04:06. | |
monster. She became bizarrely tame. We used to play catch with paper | :04:07. | :04:10. | |
balls at night and watched television together. And yet during | :04:11. | :04:14. | |
the days, we would go out and I would watch a hunt like a wild | :04:15. | :04:23. | |
hawk. She was a strange Bridge between two worlds. You write in | :04:24. | :04:29. | |
this book about your own grief. At times, clearly, you were overwhelmed | :04:30. | :04:34. | |
by it. You write about the extraordinary challenge of training | :04:35. | :04:38. | |
the temp three macro. You also write about a man called T H White who was | :04:39. | :04:46. | |
the author of a book about King Arthur, who is now forgotten writer | :04:47. | :04:51. | |
but was a significant figure in the last century. He tried himself to | :04:52. | :04:58. | |
train a goshawk and failed. Yes. It is a very sad story. One of the | :04:59. | :05:05. | |
themes of the book is the way people use nature and animals as mirrors of | :05:06. | :05:11. | |
their own needs. TH White's story is a perfect example of this. He was a | :05:12. | :05:17. | |
very sad broken man. He struggled with his sexuality and had an | :05:18. | :05:22. | |
abusive childhood. He was training with goshawk. He was fighting | :05:23. | :05:26. | |
himself. All the things he tried to master, he tried to master in the | :05:27. | :05:30. | |
hawk. There is a sense that his story and my story in form each | :05:31. | :05:35. | |
other. We were both running from our different Demons. What happened to | :05:36. | :05:40. | |
Mabel? The events of the book were six or seven years ago. It took me a | :05:41. | :05:46. | |
long time to write this book. Mabel, I flew for many more seasons. She | :05:47. | :05:51. | |
went up to a breeding programme and was put in a aviary with a very sexy | :05:52. | :05:57. | |
male goshawk. But unfortunately she contracted a horrible disease which | :05:58. | :06:03. | |
killed her overnight. It has been the bane of Falk and as for | :06:04. | :06:06. | |
centuries, this disease. She is much, much missed. I still have the | :06:07. | :06:13. | |
numbered metal ring which she wore on her leg and I keep it in my | :06:14. | :06:19. | |
jewellery box at home. Now you have a parrot? I have a parrot which, all | :06:20. | :06:28. | |
being said, is a much cuddlier bird than a goshawk. Thank you. | :06:29. | :06:36. | |
It was a pretty decent day across the UK. Bar the odd shower it is | :06:37. | :06:43. | |
fine for the rest of the evening. Into tomorrow | :06:44. | :06:44. |