“Old England is an imaginary place, a landscape built from words, woodcuts, films, paintings, picturesque engravings. It is a place imagined by people, and people do not live very long or look very hard. We are very bad at scale.… — Helen Macdonald Copy Share Image
“And I was sure it was the drink that irrigated White’s self-sabotage, for it is the common trait of alcoholics to make plans and… — Helen Macdonald Copy Share Image
“White called Prisonface to life in order that he should suffer, be punished, mocked, reduced to rags and die.” — Helen Macdonald Copy Share Image
“You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realise,… — Helen Macdonald Copy Share Image
“And when I look again she seems neither bird nor reptile, but a creature shaped by a million years of evolution for a life… — Helen Macdonald Copy Share Image
“Riding out with the Old Surrey and Burstow Hunt, White recorded the first time he saw a kill with distanced fascination. The fox was… — Helen Macdonald Copy Share Image
“He did all the right things: flew aeroplanes, shot, fished for salmon, hunted; and even better, all the wrong things: kept grass snakes in… — Helen Macdonald Copy Share Image
“I couldn't keep the dimensions of my car in my head. Or my own, for I kept having accidents. I cracked cups. I dropped… — Helen Macdonald Copy Share Image
“He was a complicated man, and an unhappy one. But he knew also that the world was full of simple miracles.” — Helen Macdonald Copy Share Image
“It wasn't just that I saw in his book, reflected backwards and dimly, my own retreat into wildness. It was this: of all the… — Helen Macdonald Copy Share Image
“and it was there, standing on the edge of a village playing field, that I gratefully stepped into novicehood again, as if I had… — Helen Macdonald Copy Share Image
