Helen MacDonald, author of H is for Hawk.

AS a child Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer. She learned the terminology and read all the classic books, including T. H. White’s classic, The Goshawk, which describes his struggle to train a hawk as a spiritual contest.

But until the death of her father, Alisdair Macdonald, a respected photojournalist, who died suddenly of a heart attack in 2007, she never imagined that she would train a Goshawk of her own. Continue reading →