H Is for Hawk (38 page)

2
that of people desirous
– Alfred Adler,
The Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology,
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1924, p. 196.

3
seemed to be creating itself
–
The Goshawk
, p. 186.

4
born at the wrong end of Time
– T. H. White,
The Sword in the Stone,
Collins, 1938, p. 46.

5
When I was a third-rate schoolmaster
– T. H. White,
The Book of Merlyn: The Unpublished Conclusion to The Once and Future King
, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1977, p. 3.

6
A good man’s example
–
ibid
, p.128.

1
One of my grandfathers . . . land management
– Logan J. Bennett, ‘This is Ours to Fight For’,
Outdoor Life
, November 1942, Volume 90, No. 3, pp. 32–3, p. 52.

2
The initiation ceremonies . . . weaving and unwoven
– T. H. White, entry dated 22 August 1939 in unpublished manuscript ‘Journal 1938–1939’, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.

1
The frequenter of downland
– H. J. Massingham,
English Downland
, B.T. Batsford, 1936, p. 5.

2
On the chalk-cults of interwar England, see Patrick Wright’s excellent
The Village that Died for England,
Faber & Faber, 1995.

1
How you can talk of love for a bird
– T. H. White, unpublished manuscript ‘The Merlins’, p. 20, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.

2
one of the lunatic dukes
–
The Goshawk
, p. 215.

My thanks go first to those people who made this book possible, and two in particular: to my wonderful agent Jessica Woollard, for her friendship, expertise and long-standing support, and to my inspiring and extraordinary editor Dan Franklin at Jonathan Cape. I’d also like to thank everyone at the Marsh Agency, and Clare Bullock, Ruth Waldram, Joe Pickering and everyone else at Jonathan Cape who worked on this book behind the scenes.

For their patience, warmth and expertise during my research visit to the Harry Ransom Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin, I’d like to thank Jean M. Cannon, Pat Fox, Margi Tenney, and Richard Workman. And in Buckinghamshire, particular thanks to William Goldsmith, who showed me around Stowe School.

The greatest of love and thanks to my mother, brother, Cheryl, Aimee, Bea, and the rest of my family, of course, for letting me tell this story without even a flicker of worry about what I might say. And love and gratitude also to Christina McLeish, the best of friends and superb under-falconer, who was a fount of support after my father’s death and during the writing of this book, and Olivia Laing, whose own books are a constant inspiration and whose wise counsel and good humour kept me writing; and to Stuart Fall and Amanda Lingham, who helped me through very dark times, and my surrogate American family: Erin Gott, Paige Parkhill, Jim and Harriet Gott, Wyatt and Curran Gott, who always make me feel at home.

So many people helped me with friendship, love, inspiration, encouragement, or in other ways while I wrote this book. Thanks are due to them all: Pat Baylis, Steve Bodio, Lee Brindley, Tim Button, Tracy Carmichael, Jake Daum, Tim Dee, Steve Delaney, John Gallagher, Andrew Hunter, Tony James, Polly Appleby and Archie James, Conor Jameson, Boris Jardine, Nick Jardine, Bill Jones, Lauren Kassell, Tim Lewens and Emma Gilby, Josh Lida, Greg Liebenhals, John Loft, Robert Macfarlane and Julia Lovell, Robert and Margaret Mair, Scott McNeff, Gordon Mellor, Toby Metcalf, Patricia Monk, Adam Norrie, Rebecca O’Connor, Ian Patterson, Robert Penney, John Pitmann, Marzena Pogorzaly, Joanna Rabiger, Joe Ryan for his chaffinches, Katharine Stubbs, and Lydia Wilson. Special thanks to Andrew Metcalf and to Fiona Mozley. And to Chris Wormell for his exquisite cover image.

And last of all, and most of all, I would like to thank my father, who taught me how to love the moving world, and to my beautiful hawk who taught me how to fly in it after he was gone. Mabel flew for many more seasons before a sudden, untreatable infection with Aspergillosis – an awful airborne fungus – carried her from her aviary to the dark woods where dwell the lost and dead. She is much missed.

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Epub ISBN: 9781448130726

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Published by Jonathan Cape 2014

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Copyright © Helen Macdonald 2014

Helen Macdonald has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

Letter, (see
here
), © Copyright Siegfried Sassoon by kind permission of the Estate of George Sassoon.

Lines from ‘Consider this’ by W. H. Auden copyright © 1930 by W. H. Auden, renewed. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.

Extracts from selected unpublished works by T. H. White by permission of Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.

Extracts from selected published works by T. H. White by permission of the Estate of T. H. White.

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by

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