Bird is the Word: with Sam Lee, Helen Macdonald and Bill Bailey
Channel: British Library
Date: 2021-05-09

Birding royalty Bill Bailey, Helen Macdonald and Sam Lee celebrate all things avian.

Whether in the city or country, birds surround us: sound-tracking our lives, visiting our gardens and brightening the skies. Yet their habitats are increasingly threatened and their complex lives often overlooked. These authors share a fascination with birds and have spent hours in their company, studying their weird and wonderful ways, musing on the melodic beauty of their songs or reflecting on their place in human memory, love and loss.

Helen Macdonald, bestselling author of H Is for Hawk, discusses her new collection of essays, Vesper Flights, with passionate conservationist, renowned musician and folk expert Sam Lee, whose debut book The Nightingale pays homage to the songbird that has inspired artists, poets and musicians for centuries.

Featuring a special recording by Bill Bailey. Bill delighted bird watchers with his Remarkable Guide to British Birds, is known for his love of animals and for the small menagerie he has built in his West London home.

Chaired by journalist and nature enthusiast Kitty Corrigan.


This event is presented in partnership with Penguin Live. To hear more from Penguin Live and be the first to know about their upcoming events, ticket discounts, competitions and much more, sign up to the Penguin Live newsletter.

Part of the British Library’s springtime season on environment: The Natural Word.

Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, naturalist and Affiliated Research Scholar at the University of Cambridge, Department of History and Philosophy of Science. Her book H Is for Hawk won the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize and Costa Book Award. Her collection of essays Vesper Flights was voted a book of the year in the Guardian, Financial Times and Daily Telegraph as well as being a Sunday Times bestseller and Radio 4 Book of the Week.

Kitty Corrigan is a freelance journalist living in the Welsh Borders. Before moving to Hay-on-Wye from London she was Deputy Editor of Country Living Magazine for 16 years. She works for a variety of magazines and as a writer/editor for Hay Festival, with a special interest in rural and environmental issues.

Sam Lee is a folk singer, conservationist, broadcaster and activist. His first album, Ground of Its Own, was nominated for a Mercury Music Prize in 2012. As a song collector he is dedicated to gathering, sharing and interpreting ancient oral music from Britain and Ireland. Sam’s singing has been heard in films and TV shows from Guy Ritchie's King Arthur: Legend of the Sword to Peaky Blinders. His first book, The Nightingale: Notes on a Songbird, is published by Penguin.

Bill Bailey is perhaps best known for his stand-up comedy shows such as Qualmpeddler, Limboland, and Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra, but he’s also entertained on television in programmes including Never Mind the Buzzcocks, the Channel 4 sitcom Black Books and QI. He is also a passionate musician, author and director and supports a number of charities. In 2020 over 11 million people watched as Bill was crowned the winner of Strictly Come Dancing.