Here is a father musing over the future life of his beloved child.

The setting is Coleridge’s cottage on a winter’s night, his son sleeping by his side. The other is this, such a classic poem of literary Romanticism it seems wrong to mention it in the same breath as a baseball movie. That’s Kevin Costner, love, death, baseball and forgiveness. 42, composed by Sergei Rachmaninov, performed by Vladimir Ashkenazy (piano)ĭISC SIX: When We Were Wolves by My Latest NovelĭISC SEVEN: Point of View Point by CorneliusīOOK CHOICE: The Karla Trilogy by John Le CarréĬASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: 'Corelli' Variations, Op.Two things are guaranteed to make me cry. She lives in Suffolk with two parrots she calls the Bugs.ĭISC ONE: Wayfaring Stranger by Rhiannon Giddens With Francesco TurrisiĭISC TWO: Lully: Le Triomphe de l'Amour: Prélude pour la nuit, composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully, performed by Capriccio Stravagante Les 24 Violons, directed by Skip SempéĭISC THREE: Michelangelo by The 23rd TurnoffĭISC FOUR: Ocean by The Velvet UndergroundĭISC FIVE: 'Corelli' Variations, Op. Helen continues to write books and essays and present programmes about the natural world. The relationship between her and Mabel became so intense that she says she became more hawk than human. Training Mabel was Helen’s way of dealing with her grief during what she describes as a very dark period of her life. The death of her father in 2007 prompted Helen to buy Mabel and bring her home to live with her. After graduating from Cambridge she worked for the National Avian Research Centre in Wales before returning to academia. When she was 12 she helped out at a local falconry centre and trained her first hawk, a kestrel called Amy. It was here that Helen became a keen bird watcher and developed a love of the natural world, spending her days in fields and meadows where she collected specimens which she brought home to study. In 1975, when Helen was five, her parents bought a house in Terkel’s Park, an estate owned by the Theosophical Society. Helen’s father was a staff photographer at the Daily Mirror and her mother was a journalist on local newspapers. The book chronicles her experiences training a goshawk called Mabel while grieving for her late father.

Helen Macdonald is a writer and naturalist who is best known as the author of H is for Hawk which won the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize and the Costa Book Award, and topped the sales charts.

Helen macdonald cambridge