Helen Macdonald

Published: June 28, 2020, noon

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Michael Berkeley\\u2019s guest is the writer Helen Macdonald, whose book "H is for Hawk" shot to the top of the bestseller lists, not just here but around the world. It\\u2019s perhaps no surprise that there\\u2019s a certain amount of birdlife in her playlist, from Stravinsky\\u2019s The Firebird to a piece inspired by a song thrush by the Finnish-English singer Hanna Tuulikki. She chooses music from A Carol Symphony by Victor Hely-Hutchinson, full of glittering ice, which consoled her when she was working in the UAE. We hear Britten\\u2019s Second String Quartet, Lully\\u2019s \\u201cThe Triumph of Love\\u201d, Sibelius\\u2019s Seventh Symphony and a song by Henry VIII.

Helen Macdonald talks about why writing about nature can be a way of holding the world to account, and about how she finds joy in the fields and lanes around her in Suffolk, during this difficult time. She reveals too what it\\u2019s like living with her grumpy parrot Birdoole, who steals the keys from her computer keyboard.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3\\nProduced by Elizabeth Burke.

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