Helen Macdonald - H is for Hawk

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 £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.