"I grew up in Camberley, a Victorian town on the A30 in Surrey. It was made of pine forests, golf courses, elderly army officers with parade ground voices, Conservative clubs and tea dances. In 1975 my parents had bought a little white house in Tekels Park, a private estate near the town centre. It was owned by the Theosophical Society. My parents were journalists and knew nothing of theosophy, but they loved the Park, and I did too. No place has so indelibly shaped my writing life".[4]
Macdonald has written and narrated several radio programmes, and appeared on television in the BBC Four documentary series, Birds Britannia, in 2010.[8] Her books include Shaler's Fish (2001), Falcon (2006), H is for Hawk (2014), and Vesper Flights (2020). Macdonald received critical acclaim for H is for Hawk, including the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction and the Costa Book Award.[9] The book—which also became a Sunday Times best-seller—describes the year Macdonald spent after the death of her father training a Northern goshawk named Mabel, and includes biographical material about the naturalist and writer T. H. White.[10]
Macdonald also helped make the film "10 X Murmuration" with filmmaker Sarah Wood as part of a 2015 exhibition at the Brighton Festival.[11] In H is for Hawk: A New Chapter, part of BBC's Natural World series in 2017, she trained a new goshawk chick.[12]
Macdonald presented the BBC Four documentary, The Hidden Wilds of the Motorway, in 2020.[13] That same year saw the publication of a fourth book, Vesper Flights, a collection of essays about "the human relationship to the natural world".[3] In 2023, with Sinistra Blaché, she published a novel, Prophet.[14][15][16][17]
Personal life
Macdonald lives in Hawkedon, Suffolk. She resided with a parrot, Birdoole, who died in 2021.[18] Macdonald's goshawk, Mabel, died in 2014.[18] Macdonald is non-binary and uses she/they pronouns.[19]