H IS FOR HAWK. By Helen Macdonald.

(2014) ND 6th printing. 8vo (138 x 222mm). Ppx,300. Not illustrated. Light tan paper-covered boards, spine titled in black.

This is the winner of the 2014 Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction. Already reprinted many times and constantly in demand". 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 masterpiece, The Goshawk. She worked in falconry and raptor conservation for many years before becoming a historian of science. But when her father dies and she is knocked sideways by grief, she becomes obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk". "She collects a female gos from a Scottish quayside and takes her home to Cambridge. Then she fills the freezer with hawk food and unplugs her phone, ready to embark on the difficult, ancient business of manning and training the hawk". "To train a hawk you must watch it like a hawk, and so gain the ability to predict what it will do next. Eventually you don't see the hawk's body language at all. You seem to feel what it feels. The hawk's apprehension becomes your own. As the days passed and I put myself in the hawk's wild mind to tame her, my humanity was burning away". MacDonald also discusses T.H. White and some aspects of the pre- and post-war falconry scene, providing an interesting counterpoint to the impassioned self-reflection of the remainder of the book.