T H White’s The Goshawk is renowned as a classic of the English pastoral genre- a terrifying tale of man’s eternal struggle to tame nature, interspersed with White’s account of his own personal struggles at the time.
Much like Helen Macdonald’s stunning memoir H is for Hawk (you can read my review of that excellent book HERE), which draws inspiration from The Goshawk, White’s book is about more than just the training of a bird. Filled with historical titbits, hawking trivia as well as passages of great personal sentiment, the book is an excellent reminder tha toyu are not alone in the struggle to find your place in the world.
White’s hawk, whom he names Gos in an uninspired attempt to distance the animal from becoming a pet, is lively and spirited, and White, who at the time was struggling through a quagmire of personal suffering, was completely inexperienced in hawk training, having gained much of his knowledge from books on the subject.
The result is as catastrophic as you would expect, and documented beautifully in White’s terse prose. The book is a triumph of writing versus subject- whilst it may sound dull to read 150 odd pages of a man trying (and failing) to tame a goshawk, the books depiction of this battle is what makes it so readable.
The Dorset Book Detective 