''H is for Hawk'' is a 2014 memoir by British author Helen Macdonald. It won the

Samuel Johnson Prize The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, formerly the Samuel Johnson Prize, is an annual British book prize for the best non-fiction writing in the English language. It was founded in 1999 following the demise of the NCR Book Award. With its ...

and Costa Book of the Year award, among other honours.

Content

''H is for Hawk'' tells Macdonald's story of the year she spent training a northern goshawk in the wake of her father's death. Her father, Alisdair Macdonald, was a respected photojournalist who died suddenly of a heart attack in 2007. Having been a falconer for many years, she purchased a young goshawk to help her through the grieving process.

Reception

The book reached ''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, w ...

'' best-seller list within two weeks of being published in July 2014.Cambridge News
Interview: Cambridge author Helen Macdonald on grief, goshawks, and her best-selling book, H is for Hawk
, Cambridge News, 7 September 2014. In an interview with ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', Macdonald said, "While the backbone of the book is a memoir about that year when I lost my father and trained a hawk, there are also other things tangled up in that story which are not memoir. There is the shadow biography of TH White, and a lot of nature-writing, too. I was trying to let these different genres speak to each other."Stephen Moss
Helen Macdonald: a bird’s eye view of love and loss
The Guardian, 5 November 2014. White was the author of ''The Goshawk'' (1951), an account of his own attempt to train a goshawk. Judges of the Samuel Johnson Prize specifically highlighted that marriage of genres as one of the reasons for selecting ''H is for Hawk'' as the winner. An extract of this book is part of the anthology of Edexcel English Language IGCSE in the new specification.

Television

In "H is for Hawk: A New Chapter", part of BBC's ''

Natural World ''Natural World'' is a strand of British wildlife documentary programmes broadcast on BBC Two and BBC Two HD and regarded by the BBC as its flagship natural history series. It is the longest-running documentary in its genre on British televis ...

'' series in 2017, she trained a new goshawk chick.

Awards and honours

*2014

, winner *2014 Costa Book of the Year, winner. *2014

Duff Cooper Prize The Duff Cooper Prize is a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of history, biography, political science or occasionally poetry, published in English or French. The prize was established in honour of Duff Cooper, a British diplomat, Ca ...

, shortlist. *2015 Thwaites Wainwright Prize, longlist. *2015

Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction __NOTOC__ The Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction were established in 2012 to recognize the best fiction and nonfiction books for adult readers published in the U.S. in the previous year. They are named in honor of ni ...

, shortlist. *2016 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, winner

References

{{Authority control 2014 non-fiction books Costa Book Award-winning works British memoirs Nature books Jonathan Cape books

Content

Reception

Television

Awards and honours

See also

References