The Goshawk

With a foreword by Helen Macdonald, author of the multi-award-winning H IS FOR HAWK.

'No hawk can be a pet. There is no sentimentality. In a way, it is the psychiatrist's art. One is matching one's mind against another mind with deadly reason and interest. One desires no transference of affection, demands no ignoble homage or gratitude. It is a tonic for the less forthright savagery of the human heart.'

First published in 1951, T.H. White's memoir describes with searing honesty his attempt to train a wild goshawk, a notoriously difficult bird to master. With no previous experience and only a few hopelessly out-of-date books on falconry as a guide, he set about trying to bend the will of his young bird Gos to his own. Suffering setback after setback, the solitary and troubled White nonetheless found himself obsessively attached to the animal he hoped would one day set him free.

“Nature writing at its very best.”

The reader who cannot tell a hawk from a handsaw may be swept up by the storm of emotion which blows between the man and his bird, and by the freedom and richness of the romantic treatment of the variations - SUNDAY TIMES

This is ... the best book on falconry, its feel, its emotions, and its flavour, ever written

T. H. White (1906-1964) was born in Bombay, India, and educated at Queen's College, Cambridge. He was the author of twenty-six published books, but he is perhaps best known for his sequence of novels reimagining the Arthurian legend, referred to collectively as THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, the fantasy MISTRESS MASHAM'S RESPONSE and THE GOSHAWK. He died at sea on his way home from a lecture tour and is buried in Piraeus, Greece.

With a foreword by Helen Macdonald, author of the multi-award-winning H IS FOR HAWK. 'No hawk can be a pet. There is no sentimentality. In a way, it is the psychiatrist's art. One is matching one's mind against another mind with deadly reason and interest. One desires no transference of affection, demands no ignoble homage or gratitude. It is a tonic for the less forthright savagery of the human heart.' First published in 1951, T.H. White's memoir describes with searing honesty his attempt to train a wild goshawk, a notoriously difficult bird to master. With no previous experience and only a few hopelessly out-of-date books on falconry as a guide, he set about trying to bend the will of his young bird Gos to his own. Suffering setback after setback, the solitary and troubled White nonetheless found himself obsessively attached to the animal he hoped would one day set him free.

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