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Helen Macdonald reads six essays from her collection about "love for the glittering world of non-human life around us."

Published in 2020, ‘Vesper Flights’ is a 42-strong essay collection by writer, poet, naturalist and historian of science, Helen Macdonald. It followed-on from her award-winning and best-selling ‘H is for Hawk’, published in 2014.

Each essay 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 they celebrate its "quality of wonder".

The six essays featured here are:

Tekels Park
High Rise
Eclipse
Wicken
In Spight of Prisons
Vesper Flights

Omnibus of five parts abridged by Julian Wilkinson.

Producer: Elizabeth Allard

First broadcast on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4 in August 2020.