In 2014 Helen Macdonald published H is for Hawk, an extraordinary memoir that somehow tethered together her grief following the death of her father, the story of the naturalist
 TH White, and her experience training a goshawk named Mabel. It won her many prestigious awards and became a worldwide bestseller. Today she is at work on a collection of essays, a new book about albatrosses, and remains an Affiliated Research Scholar at the University of Cambridge.

We join Helen on Wicken Fen, the National Trust’s oldest nature reserve, to spot wigeons, coots and hen harriers, and to talk about the odd course of her life, her presiding love for the natural world, and the experience of unanticipated success.

This episode is part of our second podcast series, The Unknown Path, following the writer and broadcaster Laura Barton as she journeys across the country to meet six authors, actors and naturalists. Taken to places from their past and present, we learn about the various, and often unexpected, routes their lives have taken.

This episode is part of our second podcast series, The Unknown Path, following the writer and broadcaster Laura Barton as she journeys across the country to meet six authors, actors and naturalists. Taken to places from their past and present, we learn about the various, and often unexpected, routes their lives have taken.