Samuel Johnson Prize: 'unusual and extraordinary' memoir wins

An "unusual" book that intertwines grief and falconry has been awarded the prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction.

The £20,000 prize was awarded to Helen Macdonald for her book H for Hawk, in which she details how she followed her childhood dream of training a goshawk as a way of dealing with the loss of her father.

The judges described it as "an extraordinary book that displayed originality and a poetic power." Claire Tomalin, chair of the judges, told The Guardian: "None of us on the panel were either naturalists or wildlife enthusiasts but this book just took hold of us."

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Macdonald is a writer, poet, illustrator, historian and a Cambridge academic. After receiving her award at a gala event in central London, she told Reuters that winning the acclaimed prize was "an astonishing emotional experience".

Her "deeply personal" story took almost seven years for Macdonald to write. It begins with the sudden death of her father, award-winning photojournalist Alisdair Macdonald, and recounts how she then began to train a hawk called Mabel, whom she says represented "all the things I wanted to be in that state of grief".

But despite being an exploration of profound grief, the book "is in no way sentimental," says Tomlinson, who praises Macdonald’s ability to convey "complex and shifting" states of mind. "It doesn’t cut any corners and her powers of observation are acute," she says.

As well as being a memoir, Macdonald also managed to incorporate the biography of novelist TH White, author of 'The Goshawk', who also trained birds of prey.

The Samuel Johnson Prize is open to books written in English on current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts published in Britain by writers of any nationality.

The rest of the 2014 shortlist:

• 'Roy Jenkins' by John Campbell
• 'The Iceberg' by Marion Coutts
• 'The Empire of Necessity' by Greg Grandin
• 'Common People' by Alison Light
• 'Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France' by Caroline Moorehead