Poet and naturalist Helen Macdonald’s ‘haunting’ book H Is For Hawk has won the Costa Book of the Year Award – the first biography to win in ten years . It describes with ‘searing honesty’ her painful struggle to come to terms with her father’s death, helped by a rather unusual companion – a hawk. Now poet and naturalist Helen Macdonald’s ‘haunting’ book H Is For Hawk has won the Costa Book of the Year Award – the first biography to win in ten years. Literary judges last night praised the part-memoir, part-nature work as ‘a unique and beautiful book with a searing emotional honesty’. It details Miss Macdonald’s journey training a baby goshawk in her small Cambridge home after the sudden loss of her photojournalist father Alisdair Macdonald. Miss Macdonald, 44, had experience of breeding and training hawks but warned in a recent interview: ‘I don’t recommend that people go and train goshawks as a way of managing grief. It’s a really terrible idea. ‘There are very few times in life when you do things that just seem necessary, even though you know to an outsider they’re a bit bewildering. 'But it was a compulsion. An extraordinary compulsion.’ Miss Macdonald, who is unmarried and has no children, added: ‘I trained the hawk because I didn’t want to be me any more. ‘I wanted to stop being a human because humans feel deep grief and emotions, and I wanted to fly away from that and become something else.’ It took the judges just an hour and a half to decide the winner of the £30,000 prize, which is one of the UK’s oldest literary awards. Chairman of the judging panel Robert Harris, himself a best-selling author, described the book as a ‘sort of modern classic’. Mr Harris also last night criticised the BBC for not running programmes dedicated to books. H Is For Hawk, Miss Macdonad’s third book, also won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction last year. Last night Miss Macdonald, who no longer owns a goshawk but has a parrot, said: ‘It was never expected and I’m really thrilled. ‘I wanted to tell a story unflinchingly about what it is like to be very, very sad and very much miss someone that you love... It was cathartic, but I didn’t expect it to be.’ It took the judges just an hour and a half to decide the winner of the £30,000 prize, which is one of the UK’s oldest literary awards. H Is For Hawk, Miss Macdonad’s third book, also won a Samuel Johnson Prize in 2013 . Miss MacDonald's award-winning H Is For Hawk . In the part-memoir, part-nature book, Miss Macdonald describes how she was knocked sideways by the death of her father in 2007. Grief-stricken, she feels compelled to train a goshawk and, after stuffing her freezer full of hawk food, drives up to Scotland and pays a breeder £800 for Mabel, her new companion. She then begins training her in her small Cambridge home. Miss Macdonald, who had trained birds of prey before, writes: ‘I didn’t feel I had any choice. I started dreaming about goshawks and I knew I really wanted to train them and fly them. 'It was the only certain thing in my life.’ She realised her solitary life with Mabel might make an interesting book but could not write it for nearly seven years. ‘It needed that distance,’ she said. ‘When I started it, I wasn’t so confessional but it didn’t work. 'I realised I had to be truthful about what happened.’ The book has been praised for its searing honesty about her grief.
Helen Macdonald’s ‘haunting’ book  has won Costa Book of the Year Award .
H Is For Hawk is a part-memoir, part-nature novel 'with emotional honesty'
44-year-old author was praised for 'unique and emotional' book by judges .
Poet and naturalist Helen Macdonald’s ‘haunting’ book H Is For Hawk has won the Costa Book of the Year Award – the first biography to win in ten years . It describes with ‘searing honesty’ her painful struggle to come to terms with her father’s death, helped by a rather unusual companion – a hawk. Now poet and naturalist Helen Macdonald’s ‘haunting’ book H Is For Hawk has won the Costa Book of the Year Award – the first biography to win in ten years. Literary judges last night praised the part-memoir, part-nature work as ‘a unique and beautiful book with a searing emotional honesty’. It details Miss Macdonald’s journey training a baby goshawk in her small Cambridge home after the sudden loss of her photojournalist father Alisdair Macdonald. Miss Macdonald, 44, had experience of breeding and training hawks but warned in a recent interview: ‘I don’t recommend that people go and train goshawks as a way of managing grief. It’s a really terrible idea. ‘There are very few times in life when you do things that just seem necessary, even though you know to an outsider they’re a bit bewildering. 'But it was a compulsion. An extraordinary compulsion.’ Miss Macdonald, who is unmarried and has no children, added: ‘I trained the hawk because I didn’t want to be me any more. ‘I wanted to stop being a human because humans feel deep grief and emotions, and I wanted to fly away from that and become something else.’ It took the judges just an hour and a half to decide the winner of the £30,000 prize, which is one of the UK’s oldest literary awards. Chairman of the judging panel Robert Harris, himself a best-selling author, described the book as a ‘sort of modern classic’. Mr Harris also last night criticised the BBC for not running programmes dedicated to books. H Is For Hawk, Miss Macdonad’s third book, also won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction last year. Last night Miss Macdonald, who no longer owns a goshawk but has a parrot, said: ‘It was never expected and I’m really thrilled. ‘I wanted to tell a story unflinchingly about what it is like to be very, very sad and very much miss someone that you love... It was cathartic, but I didn’t expect it to be.’ It took the judges just an hour and a half to decide the winner of the £30,000 prize, which is one of the UK’s oldest literary awards. H Is For Hawk, Miss Macdonad’s third book, also won a Samuel Johnson Prize in 2013 . Miss MacDonald's award-winning H Is For Hawk . In the part-memoir, part-nature book, Miss Macdonald describes how she was knocked sideways by the death of her father in 2007. Grief-stricken, she feels compelled to train a goshawk and, after stuffing her freezer full of hawk food, drives up to Scotland and pays a breeder £800 for Mabel, her new companion. She then begins training her in her small Cambridge home. Miss Macdonald, who had trained birds of prey before, writes: ‘I didn’t feel I had any choice. I started dreaming about goshawks and I knew I really wanted to train them and fly them. 'It was the only certain thing in my life.’ She realised her solitary life with Mabel might make an interesting book but could not write it for nearly seven years. ‘It needed that distance,’ she said. ‘When I started it, I wasn’t so confessional but it didn’t work. 'I realised I had to be truthful about what happened.’ The book has been praised for its searing honesty about her grief.
Poet and naturalist Helen Macdonald’s ‘haunting’ Macdonald’s ‘haunting’ book H Is For Hawk has won the Costa Book of the Year Award – the first has been praised for its searing honesty about