'Death in a feathered jacket'

Prize-winning author finds companionship - and grist for her book - in a powerful bird of prey, Hugh Lawson reports in London.

To help cope with her grief after her father's sudden death, falconer and nature writer Helen Macdonald locked herself in the house with a large, untrained bird of prey.

A peculiar choice, perhaps, but for Macdonald, who last week won the Costa book prize, the process of training her goshawk was a form of distraction and a way of putting her world back together.