H is for Hawk wins Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction

Beautiful cover design by Chris Wormell

I was delighted to hear this week that Helen MacDonald won the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction for her book, H is for Hawk. Following her father’s passing, Helen, who has had a fascination with birds of prey since she was a young girl, buys a 10-week-old female goshawk, who she names Mabel, and sets about training her. The book is the account of her training of the hawk, her coming to terms with her father’s death, and nature writing, as she writes about her relationship with the hawk and with the land. It also interweaves the story of the writer, T.H White who also trained a goshawk and wrote about it in The Goshawk. He trained the hawk with medieval methods that Helen couldn’t understand when she first read the book at eight years old, and which still appear cruel to Helen and the reader.

I heard Helen speak about the book at an event at the London Review Bookshop in September. In it she spoke about what might be called the new nature writing – or what she termed ‘the burial of self in wider world’ category. She spoke about how writers are becoming more reflexive and having to put themselves in the story, as we are on the edge of environmental apoclypse.

When Helen was interviewed on the Today programme the morning after winning the prize she said:

“It’s a real deep joy for me that a book that is about nature and a love of the natural world could win a prize like this, because nature is in real deep trouble.”

Helen also spoke at an RSA event for the shortlisted authors of the prize, and the video of the event is available online.  Helen MacDonald was the last of the five authors to speak so she is towards the end if you want to fast forward to her, but all of the authors are interesting to listen to.

She will be at the Caught by the River Social event in London on 19 November. The event is now sold out, but a limited number of tickets will be available on the door.

I wanted to quote a passage to give you a flavour, but the writing is so wonderful, I wanted to just quote everything. So I would recommend reading the book. Let me know what you think if you do.