Helen Macdonald’s H IS FOR HAWK won the £30,000 Costa Book of the Year Award. Robert Harris, chair of the prize judges, said the novel had been a ‘decisive winner’. Already acknowledged as a modern classic, it is unique in its blend of grief memoir, T H White biography and evocation of nature.
H IS FOR HAWK is partly a diary of training a large and powerful bird of prey, and partly the unflinchingly honest record of a spiritual journey. It is the story of a journey into wildness with a creature that almost brought disaster, but instead brought salvation. It explores the place of nature in the modern world, and the strange story of another falconer, goshawk-keeper and writer – the novelist T.H. White, best known for his series of Arthurian books THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING.