Charlie Gilmour and Jonathan Meiburg - Of Birds and Men

Of Birds and Men
Charlie Gilmour and Jonathan Meiburg chaired by Ali Braidwood

6pm – 7pm BST*

Featherhood Is about the young magpie that fell from its nest ina Bermondsey junkyard into Charlie Gilmour's life - and swiftly changed it. Demanding worms around the clock, riffling through his wallet, sharing his baths and roosting in his hair. It’s also about the jackdaw kept at a Cornish stately home by Heathcote Williams, anarchist, poet, magician, stealer of Christmas, and Charlie's biological father who vanished from his life in the dead of night. It is a story about repetition across generations and birds that run in the blood; about a terror of repeating the sins of the father and a desire to build a nest of one's own. In 1833, Charles Darwin was astonished by the handsome, social, and oddly crow-like falcons that he met in the Falkland Islands. Almost two hundred years later, Jonathan Meiburg takes takes us through South America, from the fog-bound coasts of Tierra del Fuego to the tropical forests of Guyana, in search of these birds: striated caracaras, which still exist, though they're very rare. A Most Remarkable Creature is a hybrid of science writing, travelogue, and biography. It is much more than a book about birds: it's a journey to uncover moments of first contact between science and religion, and humans and animals.

*This performance is live and will be available to watch for three weeks after the broadcast date to accommodate different time zones.
 
This performance is included in the Aye Write 2021 festival pass, so you will not need to purchase this event if you have already purchased a pass.

Books are available to purchase from our bookseller partner Bookshop.org. Bookshop.org supports independent booksellers and for every book purchased 10% comes back to Aye Write and Wee Write, helping to invest in our city’s book festival and reader development programmes.