July 18, 2026 • 16 mins
In 2014, falconer and author Helen MacDonald wrote a book about overcoming the sudden loss of her father, respected photojournalist Alasdair MacDonald by training a goshawk.
The book has been turned into a film starring Claire Foy (The Crown), who MacDonald believes did a fantastic job in the role.
"It's an incredible performance. She really does just haunt me, and there are times when I was watching it for the first time that I'd see her come on screen and I would think that's me," she told Francesca Rudkin.
H is for Hawk is scheduled to be released in cinemas across New Zealand on July 30.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
For seven years, Helen McDonald put off writing the story
of their father's sudden death, the story of the overwhelming
grief and how they found comfort and healing in the
most unusual of places by raising and training a goshawk
named Mabel. The memoir finally hit bookshelves in twenty fourteen.
It was a huge success, a global rest seller and
(00:33):
a Literary Award winner. Helen's story is now about to
hit cinemas. It's called h is for Hawk. Are you
feeling that you're a failure?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Well, that's as a matter of fact, be so odd
in yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
It's just working out your place in the oil town.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
I always thought Dad taught me to be detached, But
being with Mabel, it's an honest encounter with life.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
And now I see how engaged with life Dad was.
Life's real serious. And you call me.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Helen McDonald, good morning, Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
So this book all stemmed from losing your father. What
impact did his death have on you? I don't think
we ever know how something's going to affect us. We
know it's going to effect us, but we don't maybe
know to what extent.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
No. I it was my first big loss, and it
was a big one. You know, he was a press photographer.
He was a lovely, lovely man, a very gentleman. I'm
a very dear friend of mine as well as being
my dad, and we were both total nerds. You know,
we loved nature and aeroplanes and you know, we kind
of bonded over all these things. And he died very suddenly,
(01:51):
had a massive heart attack while he was outworking taking
photographs of you know, London, just after a big storm.
And I think there's something about sudden, unexpected death that is,
you know, it's not better or worse than losing someone slowly,
but it doesn't mean the world very suddenly tears in half.
And I was completely and utterly everyone in the family
who were totally blindsided.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
And yeah, it really messed me up.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
I remember doing an interview about the book in England
where someone said to me on live actually on the radio, but.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
You were thirty seven, you know, why were you so upset?
And there was dead air.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
I just stared at her, like, what are you talking
about do you know he was.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
A friend, He was my dad.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
So for a while I kind of struggled through, and
then this weird thing happened. I started dreaming about goswelks
and I did something which I don't recommend to any
of your listeners.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
I decided to train a hawk as a way of
dealing with my grief. So don't do that people. It's
a very bad idea. But I did that.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
We'll get to the goshawks in just a moment. It
took seven years to write the book. Why was that?
Was that part of you dealing with your grief?
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (02:57):
People sometimes asked that was it grief work? And I
always said no. I think it took me seven years
to write the book. Not that I was writing it
for seven years, but it took about seven years to
get to the point where I could write it. I
needed that distance. I needed to be able to write
about myself back then as if I was a character.
And I think something happens to everyone who's listening knows this.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
If you've had a big loss, is that you never
get over it.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
You just changed into a person that can hold that
grief with inside yourself, and you can be a person
who could.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Live with it, and I think I just needed that
time to be able to write about it. Once I
started writing it, it was pretty quick. It took about
a year to write the whole book.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
And when I first started it too, I tried to
be very British about it. I kept thinking, no one
wants to know about me, They want to know about
this hawk who was incredible.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
But it didn't work. You know. I kept trying to
write and I would.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
Go nowhere, and then there was this awful day when
I realized I had to be full Californian about it
and just be really honest, and then I did so,
and then it started to work. So, yeah, there's a
lot of me in this book and what it's like
to lose someone very dear to you.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
What have you learned about grief through the all? I
do wonder whether we're not actually very good at grief,
especially British people and those just see British people, shall
we say? You know, there's a lovely moment where, you know,
Clearfoy in the film, who plays you. You know, it's
(04:25):
having a conversation with her mother and they're both going
no moping, No, of course, no moping, you know, which
is an approach which sometimes doesn't always work.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
No, and that's the approach. I think that was why
I went to this hawk.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
You know, I knew I couldn't tame grief even then.
It was this uncontrollable thing that kind of worked through you, and.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
You could never predict what it would do with You'd be.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Fine for one moment and then you know, thirty seconds later,
you'd be in a wreck on the floor crying, you know.
So the hawk was kind of a manifestation of my grief,
I think, and trying to kind of master the grief
by working and getting a partnership with this bird was the.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Very weird way of of sort of dealing with it.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
But also, as you recognize from the film, it was
a way of pushing the grief. The real grief for
ray and grief is that it's just a strange, strange beast.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
I think.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
Now that you just have to sort of try and
be kind to yourself. One of the things that having
that hawk taught me, because you know, I was buying
her free and she was hunting like a real hawk,
you know, I was watching her fly and hunt for
her food and all that kind of really was a
very deep lesson in how incredibly short our lives are
(05:39):
and how precious things are, like the difference between life
and death is.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Just you know, the second.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
And then touring the book, I kept meeting people who
wanted to talk to me about their own losses and
their own grief, so often of a magnitude so much
greater than mine, and that experience, I think, even more
than writing the book or training the Hawk, taught me
that it's the loneliest thing imaginable to lose someone that
you love. But it is a total human universal.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
We all do it.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
And we're all desperate to talk about it, and it's
scary and frightening to talk about it. And I'm glad
that my book started some conversations between people.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
On it because people feel the pressure to move on. Yeah,
they feel other people are looking at them or saying,
you're you're a grown woman, you're thirty seven, you should
be able to deal with this bit or whatever it
is that this is putting on you. And I can.
I can totally understand why when people would come and go,
I want to talk to I want to talk to Helen.
She understands what I've been through. She's put it out there.
(06:34):
You know, there's almost given permission to be able to
talk about their grief, which is ridiculous as well. We
should we should, we should be much more open to
allowing people to grieve in their own ways for as
long as.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
They like, Yeah, and gently. You know.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
I do remember before this happened to me, I remember
a few people that I knew who lost people, and.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
I was kind of scared of them.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
I didn't really want to talk to them because I
was It's almost like grief is contagious, you know, you
don't want to get near.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
People that have it.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
And I've realized now how ridiculous that is. So Yeah,
if someone you love has lost someone, be there for them.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, Helen, what was it like watching clear Foroy play you?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
So there's a really funny story about this. I was
delighted when she took on the role. I was like, oh,
I'm being played by the Queen.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
You know.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
She was in the Crown.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
And I didn't speak to her until about two weeks
before the film began shooting and I had the zoom
with her and this person appeared on the screen and
I thought to myself, Oh my god, you know, it's Clairefoy.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
And then as we talked, I had this incredible situation. I'm, oh,
my god, she's just like me. She's exactly like me.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
We've got the same mannerism as we even dressed the same,
we've got the same haircut. And then slowly as we talked,
it dawns on me that she was actually just finessing
this extraordinary performance.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
She just is so much.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
Like me, even down to the fact that I've got
one leg longer than the other, and she's even got
my wonky walk.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
It's astonishing.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
I went to the set and I saw her walk
around the college cloisters that I used to hook around
with my walk, you know a few you know, it
was a decade a bit earlier.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
I felt like a ghost watching her. Felt I had
to put my hands out and grab hold.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
Of the bricks on the cloisters wall to remind myself
I was alive.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
It's an incredible performance. She really does just spaunt me.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
And there are times when I was watching it for
the first time that I'd see her come on screen
and I would think, that's me. That's how good it is.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
It's amazing, and of course Brindan Layson plays your father.
What was it like watching someone play your father and
watching your beautiful relationship play out on screen?
Speaker 4 (08:34):
They got that relationship so so perfectly, the love and
that kind of cherishing and that kind of just deep,
deep joy in each other's company. And Brendan is not
physically very much like my dad. My dad was a
lot slighter.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
He had darker hair, and.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
I didn't know if Brendan could do my dad basically
on screen.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
And I went again on set. There was a van
turned up and.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
He leapt out of it wearing, you know, my dad's clothes,
and he looked worried and said, you know, it must
be a bit weird seeing you wearing your father's clothes,
and the worry in his face, the worry in his
expression as he said that, my heart just crumpled, you know.
And it turns out that he's exactly like my dad
on screen in ways I can't really explain. It's this
(09:23):
kind of unreconstructed masculinity that sort of merged with this
enormous heart, the size of a house, and all this
huge love.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
He's incredible.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
I know I sound like I'm just yelling about this movie,
but it's so much better than I thought it would be.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
But it was such a beautiful relationship. And actually, your
dad was an extraordinary man. He was an incredible photojournalist,
and I believe that the photos that we see in
the film are his photos. I mean, he was everywhere
photographing everything that keptured every moment that He's extraordinary. It
was lovely to meet him al you know as well
on screen.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
I still do this, You're still someone's talking in front
of me and turn around fasts. I just I just
did almost flinch automatically because I expect this to be
a photograph. You know, there are more photographs of me
and my brother as kids, and I think any other
children really well. But yeah, he loved to record the
beauties and wonders of the world, and you know a
lot of famous photos that he took are in the film,
and also other things my brother loaned the film the production,
(10:20):
my dad's real cameras, which are in the film. Claire
wears the actual Hawking waistcoat that I wore when I
flew Mabel. So there's an extraordinary kind of sense that
the film is made up of bits of real the
real story, kind of like interleaved in it, which I
don't know. It's kind of really moving that those things
are in there. So, yeah, he was a great photographer.
(10:40):
He took that picture of Prince Charles and Lady Diana
kissing on the balcony, which is super famous and I
can't remember, but I think they published it with the
wrong byline error, and he was so.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Cross about it. Yeah, he was a great photographer and
a lovely man.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Let's talk about Mabel Gosh. I know that Mabes, you'd
been involved with the falconry before, but you'd never had
a gothawk. As you say, this sort of this idea
came to you in a dream. Tell us a little
bit about gosthawks, because they are quite a difficult hawk
to train to hand alongside a human, aren't they.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Yeah. They they have this.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
Reputation in fulconer as being kind of feather shotguns. They're
these sort of very skittish highly a bit like a
thoroughbred racehorse. They're very nervy, They're quite skittish and uncontrollable.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
They're also very powerful and predatory and very very hard
to tame.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
And I never wanted one. I always thought there were
kind of these sort of killing machines that boys liked
to fly. And then when my dad died, I just
couldn't stop dreaming about them. And then when I, you know,
tamed Maple and you can develop this incredibly strong bond
with the gospelk and I didn't know that to the
point where this is astonishing because they managed to get
(11:59):
this in the film, which I never thought was possible.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
But you can play with them. They've become very playful.
You know.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
I'd throw it's a paper to her and she'd throw
them back to me, and she'd kind of laugh and
you could almost tell in a goss Talks expression, you know,
when they're laughing.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
So it turns out that a hawk that I was
told by all.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
The sort of boy falconers was this kind of merciless,
humorless killing machine was a bewitchingly funny and.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Rounded and beautiful soul that really kept me going.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
But it wasn't a story that in which the hawk
was like a you know, I was sad I got
a hawk, and then I felt better. You know, I
really did go through it with that bird. You know,
I identified with her to the point where I sort
of felt almost like I wasn't a human. It was
a very dark time, but a very beautiful one, and
I'm very grateful to her for being there now.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
And I thought that Clearfoyd did a very good job
handling it, because my gosh, I think most of us
would have from the first moment it kind of I mean,
I don't know what you call it, just will try
and fly away. I suppose did terrifying?
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Yeah yet close?
Speaker 4 (13:04):
Yeah, because no, absolutely, And you know, I was I
knew she had a bit of tree. She had two
weeks falconry training with an incredible guy for Lloyd Buck,
who did the.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Hawks of the film.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
And it turns out, luckily that Clairefoy is an absolutely
natural falconer. I don't know whether that's partly just you know,
that's the way she is, but partly I think being
an actor helps, because part of the thing in falcon
is you have to be able to learn to read
infinitesimally small writer expressions and postures on the walk to
(13:35):
know what it's thinking.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
And she just instantly got it.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
And I saw the film with a whole bunch of
falconers a few months ago, and all of them refused
to believe that she wasn't already a falconer, so go Claire.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Yeah, no, it's amazing, and I do I think they
really captured the beauty of these hawks, these birds, didn't
they and what they can do. And yeah, I was
mismerized by very good performance by the goshawk.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Five gospelks.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
I believe there's moreally one gossip in that film, but
you know that's hollywood'st of how it works. But yeah,
the flight photography is astonishing. You know that you have
incredible cameramen and there are shots there that, more than
any other flight shots I've ever seen a birds of
praying flying really capture that sense that when you're flying
a hawk that you have lived with and you're partnered
with in the way, your heart is with them as
(14:24):
they fly. And I think the audience gets that when
you it's a spectacular film.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Hell on my must ask what happened? What happened to
Mabel Mapes?
Speaker 4 (14:34):
I flew Mabel for a few more seasons in a
much less manic way bank goodness, and then I ran
out of money. Because I was a penniless academic. It's
not the most relucative of career choices, and I had
to move back in with my mom, and my mom
happened to live at that time in some of Britain's
most exclusive and expensive pheasant shooting estates around her, so
(14:58):
I couldn't get permission to fly her anywhere. So I
loaned her to a very good folk in her up north,
and she flew again, had a couple of seasons up there,
and she died very very suddenly of a fungal infection
in her lungs called aspergulosis. It's one of those random
things that anyone with an animal knows that you know,
your time with them can always be cut short by
random things.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
And she died very suddenly. And I still have some
of her malted feathers in a jar on my mantelpiece,
and I miss her.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
She was the bird of my life, you know, like
people sometimes say that was the dog of my life.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Mabel was the bird of my life.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
And seeing her resurrected in the film in a way,
it is just beautiful.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Are you still involved with falconry.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
I'm actually in the moment. I'm in Maine, in.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
Northeast America, staying with some very old friends who I
met through falconry.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
And I don't fly a bird.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
I have parrots now, but I still I'm still friends
with a whole bunch of falconers.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Yeah, I have parrots. People laugh about parrots.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
I have them because I'm, you know, emotionally more well
rounded and developed now that I can have parrots, not hawks.
But honestly, honestly, I have more scars from parrots than
I've ever had from.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
A bird of preye. They're vicious inah.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
So yeah, I think one day I'd love to get
back into it, but at the moment I'm traveling too
much to really do justice to a hawk one day.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Helen, it's been so lovely to talk to you. Thank
you so much for your time and for sharing your
beautiful story.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Thank you, it's been such a joy. I've had a
lovely time talking to you. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
That was author Helen McDonald. The film we're talking about
is h Is for Hawk. It's based on Helen's best
selling memoir and the film is in cinemas on Thursday,
thirtieth of July.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio,
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
For seven years, Helen McDonald put off writing the story
of their father's sudden death, the story of the overwhelming
grief and how they found comfort and healing in the
most unusual of places by raising and training a goshawk
named Mabel. The memoir finally hit bookshelves in twenty fourteen.
It was a huge success, a global rest seller and
(00:33):
a Literary Award winner. Helen's story is now about to
hit cinemas. It's called h is for Hawk. Are you
feeling that you're a failure?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Well, that's as a matter of fact, be so odd
in yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
It's just working out your place in the oil town.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
I always thought Dad taught me to be detached, But
being with Mabel, it's an honest encounter with life.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
And now I see how engaged with life Dad was.
Life's real serious. And you call me.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Helen McDonald, good morning, Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
So this book all stemmed from losing your father. What
impact did his death have on you? I don't think
we ever know how something's going to affect us. We
know it's going to effect us, but we don't maybe
know to what extent.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
No. I it was my first big loss, and it
was a big one. You know, he was a press photographer.
He was a lovely, lovely man, a very gentleman. I'm
a very dear friend of mine as well as being
my dad, and we were both total nerds. You know,
we loved nature and aeroplanes and you know, we kind
of bonded over all these things. And he died very suddenly,
(01:51):
had a massive heart attack while he was outworking taking
photographs of you know, London, just after a big storm.
And I think there's something about sudden, unexpected death that is,
you know, it's not better or worse than losing someone slowly,
but it doesn't mean the world very suddenly tears in half.
And I was completely and utterly everyone in the family
who were totally blindsided.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
And yeah, it really messed me up.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
I remember doing an interview about the book in England
where someone said to me on live actually on the radio, but.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
You were thirty seven, you know, why were you so upset?
And there was dead air.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
I just stared at her, like, what are you talking
about do you know he was.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
A friend, He was my dad.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
So for a while I kind of struggled through, and
then this weird thing happened. I started dreaming about goswelks
and I did something which I don't recommend to any
of your listeners.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
I decided to train a hawk as a way of
dealing with my grief. So don't do that people. It's
a very bad idea. But I did that.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
We'll get to the goshawks in just a moment. It
took seven years to write the book. Why was that?
Was that part of you dealing with your grief?
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (02:57):
People sometimes asked that was it grief work? And I
always said no. I think it took me seven years
to write the book. Not that I was writing it
for seven years, but it took about seven years to
get to the point where I could write it. I
needed that distance. I needed to be able to write
about myself back then as if I was a character.
And I think something happens to everyone who's listening knows this.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
If you've had a big loss, is that you never
get over it.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
You just changed into a person that can hold that
grief with inside yourself, and you can be a person
who could.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Live with it, and I think I just needed that
time to be able to write about it. Once I
started writing it, it was pretty quick. It took about
a year to write the whole book.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
And when I first started it too, I tried to
be very British about it. I kept thinking, no one
wants to know about me, They want to know about
this hawk who was incredible.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
But it didn't work. You know. I kept trying to
write and I would.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
Go nowhere, and then there was this awful day when
I realized I had to be full Californian about it
and just be really honest, and then I did so,
and then it started to work. So, yeah, there's a
lot of me in this book and what it's like
to lose someone very dear to you.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
What have you learned about grief through the all? I
do wonder whether we're not actually very good at grief,
especially British people and those just see British people, shall
we say? You know, there's a lovely moment where, you know,
Clearfoy in the film, who plays you. You know, it's
(04:25):
having a conversation with her mother and they're both going
no moping, No, of course, no moping, you know, which
is an approach which sometimes doesn't always work.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
No, and that's the approach. I think that was why
I went to this hawk.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
You know, I knew I couldn't tame grief even then.
It was this uncontrollable thing that kind of worked through you, and.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
You could never predict what it would do with You'd be.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Fine for one moment and then you know, thirty seconds later,
you'd be in a wreck on the floor crying, you know.
So the hawk was kind of a manifestation of my grief,
I think, and trying to kind of master the grief
by working and getting a partnership with this bird was the.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Very weird way of of sort of dealing with it.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
But also, as you recognize from the film, it was
a way of pushing the grief. The real grief for
ray and grief is that it's just a strange, strange beast.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
I think.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
Now that you just have to sort of try and
be kind to yourself. One of the things that having
that hawk taught me, because you know, I was buying
her free and she was hunting like a real hawk,
you know, I was watching her fly and hunt for
her food and all that kind of really was a
very deep lesson in how incredibly short our lives are
(05:39):
and how precious things are, like the difference between life
and death is.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Just you know, the second.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
And then touring the book, I kept meeting people who
wanted to talk to me about their own losses and
their own grief, so often of a magnitude so much
greater than mine, and that experience, I think, even more
than writing the book or training the Hawk, taught me
that it's the loneliest thing imaginable to lose someone that
you love. But it is a total human universal.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
We all do it.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
And we're all desperate to talk about it, and it's
scary and frightening to talk about it. And I'm glad
that my book started some conversations between people.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
On it because people feel the pressure to move on. Yeah,
they feel other people are looking at them or saying,
you're you're a grown woman, you're thirty seven, you should
be able to deal with this bit or whatever it
is that this is putting on you. And I can.
I can totally understand why when people would come and go,
I want to talk to I want to talk to Helen.
She understands what I've been through. She's put it out there.
(06:34):
You know, there's almost given permission to be able to
talk about their grief, which is ridiculous as well. We
should we should, we should be much more open to
allowing people to grieve in their own ways for as
long as.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
They like, Yeah, and gently. You know.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
I do remember before this happened to me, I remember
a few people that I knew who lost people, and.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
I was kind of scared of them.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
I didn't really want to talk to them because I
was It's almost like grief is contagious, you know, you
don't want to get near.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
People that have it.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
And I've realized now how ridiculous that is. So Yeah,
if someone you love has lost someone, be there for them.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, Helen, what was it like watching clear Foroy play you?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
So there's a really funny story about this. I was
delighted when she took on the role. I was like, oh,
I'm being played by the Queen.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
You know.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
She was in the Crown.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
And I didn't speak to her until about two weeks
before the film began shooting and I had the zoom
with her and this person appeared on the screen and
I thought to myself, Oh my god, you know, it's Clairefoy.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
And then as we talked, I had this incredible situation. I'm, oh,
my god, she's just like me. She's exactly like me.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
We've got the same mannerism as we even dressed the same,
we've got the same haircut. And then slowly as we talked,
it dawns on me that she was actually just finessing
this extraordinary performance.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
She just is so much.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
Like me, even down to the fact that I've got
one leg longer than the other, and she's even got
my wonky walk.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
It's astonishing.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
I went to the set and I saw her walk
around the college cloisters that I used to hook around
with my walk, you know a few you know, it
was a decade a bit earlier.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
I felt like a ghost watching her. Felt I had
to put my hands out and grab hold.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
Of the bricks on the cloisters wall to remind myself
I was alive.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
It's an incredible performance. She really does just spaunt me.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
And there are times when I was watching it for
the first time that I'd see her come on screen
and I would think, that's me. That's how good it is.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
It's amazing, and of course Brindan Layson plays your father.
What was it like watching someone play your father and
watching your beautiful relationship play out on screen?
Speaker 4 (08:34):
They got that relationship so so perfectly, the love and
that kind of cherishing and that kind of just deep,
deep joy in each other's company. And Brendan is not
physically very much like my dad. My dad was a
lot slighter.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
He had darker hair, and.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
I didn't know if Brendan could do my dad basically
on screen.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
And I went again on set. There was a van
turned up and.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
He leapt out of it wearing, you know, my dad's clothes,
and he looked worried and said, you know, it must
be a bit weird seeing you wearing your father's clothes,
and the worry in his face, the worry in his
expression as he said that, my heart just crumpled, you know.
And it turns out that he's exactly like my dad
on screen in ways I can't really explain. It's this
(09:23):
kind of unreconstructed masculinity that sort of merged with this
enormous heart, the size of a house, and all this
huge love.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
He's incredible.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
I know I sound like I'm just yelling about this movie,
but it's so much better than I thought it would be.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
But it was such a beautiful relationship. And actually, your
dad was an extraordinary man. He was an incredible photojournalist,
and I believe that the photos that we see in
the film are his photos. I mean, he was everywhere
photographing everything that keptured every moment that He's extraordinary. It
was lovely to meet him al you know as well
on screen.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
I still do this, You're still someone's talking in front
of me and turn around fasts. I just I just
did almost flinch automatically because I expect this to be
a photograph. You know, there are more photographs of me
and my brother as kids, and I think any other
children really well. But yeah, he loved to record the
beauties and wonders of the world, and you know a
lot of famous photos that he took are in the film,
and also other things my brother loaned the film the production,
(10:20):
my dad's real cameras, which are in the film. Claire
wears the actual Hawking waistcoat that I wore when I
flew Mabel. So there's an extraordinary kind of sense that
the film is made up of bits of real the
real story, kind of like interleaved in it, which I
don't know. It's kind of really moving that those things
are in there. So, yeah, he was a great photographer.
(10:40):
He took that picture of Prince Charles and Lady Diana
kissing on the balcony, which is super famous and I
can't remember, but I think they published it with the
wrong byline error, and he was so.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Cross about it. Yeah, he was a great photographer and
a lovely man.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Let's talk about Mabel Gosh. I know that Mabes, you'd
been involved with the falconry before, but you'd never had
a gothawk. As you say, this sort of this idea
came to you in a dream. Tell us a little
bit about gosthawks, because they are quite a difficult hawk
to train to hand alongside a human, aren't they.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Yeah. They they have this.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
Reputation in fulconer as being kind of feather shotguns. They're
these sort of very skittish highly a bit like a
thoroughbred racehorse. They're very nervy, They're quite skittish and uncontrollable.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
They're also very powerful and predatory and very very hard
to tame.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
And I never wanted one. I always thought there were
kind of these sort of killing machines that boys liked
to fly. And then when my dad died, I just
couldn't stop dreaming about them. And then when I, you know,
tamed Maple and you can develop this incredibly strong bond
with the gospelk and I didn't know that to the
point where this is astonishing because they managed to get
(11:59):
this in the film, which I never thought was possible.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
But you can play with them. They've become very playful.
You know.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
I'd throw it's a paper to her and she'd throw
them back to me, and she'd kind of laugh and
you could almost tell in a goss Talks expression, you know,
when they're laughing.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
So it turns out that a hawk that I was
told by all.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
The sort of boy falconers was this kind of merciless,
humorless killing machine was a bewitchingly funny and.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Rounded and beautiful soul that really kept me going.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
But it wasn't a story that in which the hawk
was like a you know, I was sad I got
a hawk, and then I felt better. You know, I
really did go through it with that bird. You know,
I identified with her to the point where I sort
of felt almost like I wasn't a human. It was
a very dark time, but a very beautiful one, and
I'm very grateful to her for being there now.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
And I thought that Clearfoyd did a very good job
handling it, because my gosh, I think most of us
would have from the first moment it kind of I mean,
I don't know what you call it, just will try
and fly away. I suppose did terrifying?
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Yeah yet close?
Speaker 4 (13:04):
Yeah, because no, absolutely, And you know, I was I
knew she had a bit of tree. She had two
weeks falconry training with an incredible guy for Lloyd Buck,
who did the.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Hawks of the film.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
And it turns out, luckily that Clairefoy is an absolutely
natural falconer. I don't know whether that's partly just you know,
that's the way she is, but partly I think being
an actor helps, because part of the thing in falcon
is you have to be able to learn to read
infinitesimally small writer expressions and postures on the walk to
(13:35):
know what it's thinking.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
And she just instantly got it.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
And I saw the film with a whole bunch of
falconers a few months ago, and all of them refused
to believe that she wasn't already a falconer, so go Claire.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Yeah, no, it's amazing, and I do I think they
really captured the beauty of these hawks, these birds, didn't
they and what they can do. And yeah, I was
mismerized by very good performance by the goshawk.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Five gospelks.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
I believe there's moreally one gossip in that film, but
you know that's hollywood'st of how it works. But yeah,
the flight photography is astonishing. You know that you have
incredible cameramen and there are shots there that, more than
any other flight shots I've ever seen a birds of
praying flying really capture that sense that when you're flying
a hawk that you have lived with and you're partnered
with in the way, your heart is with them as
(14:24):
they fly. And I think the audience gets that when
you it's a spectacular film.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Hell on my must ask what happened? What happened to
Mabel Mapes?
Speaker 4 (14:34):
I flew Mabel for a few more seasons in a
much less manic way bank goodness, and then I ran
out of money. Because I was a penniless academic. It's
not the most relucative of career choices, and I had
to move back in with my mom, and my mom
happened to live at that time in some of Britain's
most exclusive and expensive pheasant shooting estates around her, so
(14:58):
I couldn't get permission to fly her anywhere. So I
loaned her to a very good folk in her up north,
and she flew again, had a couple of seasons up there,
and she died very very suddenly of a fungal infection
in her lungs called aspergulosis. It's one of those random
things that anyone with an animal knows that you know,
your time with them can always be cut short by
random things.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
And she died very suddenly. And I still have some
of her malted feathers in a jar on my mantelpiece,
and I miss her.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
She was the bird of my life, you know, like
people sometimes say that was the dog of my life.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Mabel was the bird of my life.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
And seeing her resurrected in the film in a way,
it is just beautiful.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Are you still involved with falconry.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
I'm actually in the moment. I'm in Maine, in.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
Northeast America, staying with some very old friends who I
met through falconry.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
And I don't fly a bird.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
I have parrots now, but I still I'm still friends
with a whole bunch of falconers.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Yeah, I have parrots. People laugh about parrots.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
I have them because I'm, you know, emotionally more well
rounded and developed now that I can have parrots, not hawks.
But honestly, honestly, I have more scars from parrots than
I've ever had from.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
A bird of preye. They're vicious inah.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
So yeah, I think one day I'd love to get
back into it, but at the moment I'm traveling too
much to really do justice to a hawk one day.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Helen, it's been so lovely to talk to you. Thank
you so much for your time and for sharing your
beautiful story.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Thank you, it's been such a joy. I've had a
lovely time talking to you. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
That was author Helen McDonald. The film we're talking about
is h Is for Hawk. It's based on Helen's best
selling memoir and the film is in cinemas on Thursday,
thirtieth of July.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio,
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