Category: Books

I have just finished reading “Falcon” by Helen Macdonald. It is full of all things falcon but with a distinctly anthropological bent. There is an introductory chapter on the natural history of the falcon but thereafter the concern is with the symbolically created meanings arising from human interaction with the falcons – primarily the Peregrine Falcon. Continue reading

I have finished reading T.H. White’s book “The Goshawk” written during 1938 but not published until 1951. Its description of the author’s attempts to train a Goshawk using techniques primitive even at the time is not so much a book about the bird as about his own psychological desire to tame the animal and also his respect for the wildness of it. This contradiction and some of the psychological factors underlying it are nicely observed in the introduction by Marie Winn especially if you are fond of Freudian interpretation. Continue reading