Writer Helen MacDonald pictured with David Walliams. Photo / Twitter / @HelenJMacdonald
Writer Helen MacDonald pictured with David Walliams. Photo / Twitter / @HelenJMacdonald
"Thank you so much. You're the highlight of my festival". That was an audience member to Helen MacDonald, at the audience participation stage of an exceptionally well run and enjoyable session. So much of the festival experience depends on good chemistry between writer and on-stage interviewer, and MacDonald and her chair Noelle McCarthy could hardly have been better matched. 

 They managed to combine easy, witty banter with a very high calibre intellectual discussion about grief, death, our relationship with the natural world, and murderous birds.
"When my dad died, I responded mostly at a very intuitive level, and one of my intuitions was, to cope with Dad's death I am going to train a goshawk. Which is not something I generally recommend people do. They have a bit of a reputation as the psychopaths of the bird world".
In fact, as MacDonald made crystal clear, birds are never murderous: that's a human concept.

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