Helen Macdonald reads from her new essay collection. Today, she is on the observation deck at the Empire State Building, and more than a thousand feet up she finds that the skies are 'teeming with unexpected biological abundance.'

Vesper Flights is Helen Macdonald's first book since the publication of the award-winning and best-selling H is for Hawk. Each essay in this collection by the acclaimed nature writer explores humanity’s connection with the natural world, our curiosity about it and our love for it, as well as its increasingly urgent fragility. The essays are also a reminder that we inhabit a beautiful world, and celebrate it in all its wonder.

Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, naturalist and historian of science. H is for Hawk won several prestigious prizes, including the Samuel Johnson and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger in France.

Abridged by Julian Wilkinson
Produced by Elizabeth Allard Show less