---
product_id: 292242310
title: "Featherhood: 'The best piece of nature writing since H is for Hawk, and the most powerful work of biography I have read in years' Neil Gaiman"
brand: "gilmourcharlie"
price: "€ 18.92"
currency: EUR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 7
url: https://www.desertcart.fi/products/292242310-featherhood-the-best-piece-of-nature-writing-since-h-is
store_origin: FI
region: Finland
---

# Featherhood: 'The best piece of nature writing since H is for Hawk, and the most powerful work of biography I have read in years' Neil Gaiman

**Brand:** gilmourcharlie
**Price:** € 18.92
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** Featherhood: 'The best piece of nature writing since H is for Hawk, and the most powerful work of biography I have read in years' Neil Gaiman by gilmourcharlie
- **How much does it cost?** € 18.92 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.fi](https://www.desertcart.fi/products/292242310-featherhood-the-best-piece-of-nature-writing-since-h-is)

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## Description

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![Featherhood: 'The best piece of nature writing since H is for Hawk, and the most powerful work of biography I have read in years' Neil Gaiman - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/412uwiZq64S.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Good Read
  

*by C***. on Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 12 December 2022*

This was an enjoyable book to read if you like birds and nature.Also rather moving with a parental relationship and the birth of a child.

### ⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    The Good Son
  

*by M***M on Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 19 May 2021*

Charlie Gilmour’s late father was the anarchist poet, actor, and conjuror, Heathcote Williams.  Out of ennui, derangement, or pure whim, Williams deserted both Charlie and his mother Polly, leaving them in virtual penury.  That state was solved through Polly’s happy marriage to Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, but the terrible emotional damage Heathcote inflicted on Charlie was not so readily addressed.  This book stands as an exploration and attempted exorcism of his raging, life-long sense of abandonment.  It’s finely written, though often painful to read.  Rather than David Gilmour, it has more in common with the work of his sometime colleague in Pink Floyd, Roger Waters. Both he and Charlie bear sharp scars from a vanished dad and, perhaps wisely, Gilmour wrote his memoir while seeking out professional help.Framing it is his adoption of an urban magpie chick, dubbed Benzine.  Her growth and eventual flight serve as a solid metaphor for Charlie’s status and his coming to terms with memory, as well as with Heathcote’s final illness, and his own assumption of parenthood through the birth of his first child.  Benzine inspires some dazzling descriptive prose.  In addition, Gilmour adroitly positions the bird as a symbol for the book itself, glossy, self-assured, but also possessed of a very sharp beak and claws.  If several hefty pecks and scratches are delivered to the feckless Heathcote, though, much other damage is self-inflicted: relentlessly detailing the mechanics of cremation to your father on his death bed is surely enough to induce a cold sweat of guilt and contrition in any son for years.It’s impossible to account for Polly and Charlie’s desertion, or to underplay the havoc, hurt, and subsequent rage that it hatched.  Yet, since Heathcote is no longer able to speak for himself, something should be said in his defence.  This book strips him of dignity and grants him precious little grace, and Charlie expresses astonishment at the huge congregation which gathered for his funeral in Oxford.  He shouldn’t.  The crowd was there to mourn a very different person from the inept and grubby wastrel depicted here: a unique, spell-binding intelligence, one furious at political cant and possessed of an exceptional sense of hospitality and humour.  Charlie’s tragedy is that he never enjoyed this side of his father’s personality in the full entrancing warmth and colour of its embrace.  One wishes him well with his therapy. Despite the gilded comfort of his adoptive family and the obvious joy delivered by a baby daughter, the suspicion lingers that his pain and vengeful deprivation cannot be dispelled by the writing of any book, not even one as sleek and fully-fledged in its redemptive arc as this.  Some birds remain in captivity, even when their cage is long gone.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Brilliant, moving debut
  

*by J***D on Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 7 September 2020*

Rarely do I and Elton John agree on matters of literary criticism but Rocketman is right in hailing Featherhood as the book of the season.What kind of book is it? One main strand is ornithology: Featherhood is a scholarly  addition to corvid lore. Gilmour is a bird watcher from close up. You’ll never really understand a magpie, we gather, unless it defecates in your hair and, by way of love, stuffs live maggots down your ear. Binoculars are for sissies.Featherhood is a recovery memoir. Charlie Gilmour---on the day after he swung in mad protest against student fees on the Cenotaph flag---was the most hated young man in Britain: soon to be a jailbird. The book doesn’t shirk that degradation. He’s different now.The book is a voyage round Charlie’s father Heathcote Williams---a wayward literary genius and a magician who played cruel tricks on his son. Heathcote was here, there and, when most needed, a puff of smoke.As he records Charlie was rescued by his mother and ‘dad’ (adoptive father). But one aspect of the book’s story is the long slow bruise Heathcote inflicted. Not all of it, we can think, may have come to the surface yet.Charlie adopted his bird, Benzene as a lonely fledgeling in a junk yard, and named the bird after the brilliant oil stain around it.  Adoption is main theme of Featherhood as is sonhood and fatherhood.Lady Benzene, when the time comes, makes her nest out of filched fragments and embellishes it with stolen treasure. This is how Gilmour has constructed his story. Bits and pieces of a fractured life are woven, and weave themselves, into shape and significance.  Featherhood is a brilliant, moving, debut.

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*Product available on Desertcart Finland*
*Store origin: FI*
*Last updated: 2026-02-11*