Cancelled: H is for Hawk with Helen Macdonald

From the archive

This event last happened on 18 October 2014

**UPDATE**

We are very sorry to announce that Helen has been forced to cancel due to illness. Refunds are available - please contact the Box Office before 1pm on Saturday 18 October on 0114 275 7727. This will not affect the screening of Kes

From the age of seven Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer. She learned the arcane terminology and read all the classic books, including T. H. White’s masterpiece, The Goshawk. When her father died she was knocked sideways by grief and became obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. She bought Mabel for £800 on a Scottish quayside, filled the freezer with hawk food and unplugged the phone, ready to embark on the long, strange business of trying to train this wildest of animals.

Destined to be a classic of nature writing, H is for Hawk 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 un-taming. It's a book about memory, nature and nation and how it might be possible to try to reconcile death with life and love.

Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, illustrator, historian and affiliate at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Her books include Falcon and Shaler’s Fish.

‘It just sings. I couldn’t stop reading.’ Mark Haddon

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