Featherhood cover art

Featherhood

On Birds and Fathers

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Featherhood

By: Charlie Gilmour
Narrated by: Charlie Gilmour
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About this listen

 'INCREDIBLY MOVING' ELTON JOHN

'A SOARING DEBUT' SUNDAY TIMES

'WONDERFUL' HELEN MACDONALD

'DAZZLING' TELEGRAPH

This is a story about birds and fathers.

About the young magpie that fell from its nest in a 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 . . .

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.

It is a story about change - from wild to tame; from sanity to madness; from life to death to birth; from freedom to captivity and back again, via an insane asylum, a prison and a magpie's nest.

And ultimately, it is the story of a love affair between a man and a magpie.©2019 Charlie Gilmour (P)2020 Orion Publishing Group Animals Biological Sciences Birds Birdwatching Outdoors & Nature Parenting & Families Parents & Adult Children Pets & Animal Care Science

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All stars
Most relevant  
This is the most beautiful and moving biography not only of a bird but of two men, father and son and their struggle to find each other.

So beautiful!

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I had this in my wish list for a good while as it seemed right up my street. being by Charlie Gilmour was what was stopping me buying it.
I am ex Army and he did what he did to the cenotaph so I thought I knew all I needed to know, anyway I was struggling to find something I liked so through caution to the wind .
I'm pleased I did I thoroughly enjoyed it. Still not sure about Gilmour but the book I enjoyed thoroughly.

loved it

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Narrated brilliantly, a profound and moving story. I really enjoyed it! My first audiobook listen.

Amazing read

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Charlie’s voice was so easy to listen too. I have a concentration problems, and found the way he spoke and explained so much of the story ,that made me think I was there. Loved it but rescue is my thing.

Kept me intrigued and couldn’t put it down. A site into the Gilmores !

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Heartfelt, messy and magical. The writing is crisp and vivid. The best book I’ve read in years!

A magical memoir

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This book has left me feeling very emotional. It was so well written, so vulnerable, so raw. Very beautiful

Please Read

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loved it. charmingly told with warmth and insight. highly recommended. was sad when it ended.

a good read/listen

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I heard Charlie talking on Saturday Live and was fascinated by his story so bought the audible version. Oh what an interesting story he tells. His narration is perfect with his soothing tones. I highly recommend this lovely book.

A wonderful book!

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Very well writen and so pleasantly narrated by the author. I really LOVED this book!!

Magic Magpie

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One cannot help but feel rather sorry for Charlie Gilmour in his relentless search for meaning in the enigma of his biological father’s absence. Articulate, intimate and introverted, this autobiography and account of an improbable relationship with a young abandoned magpie is as enigmatic as Gilmour’s missing parent, the writer Heathcote Williams. The narrative makes at times for excruciating listening and Gilmour’s forensic critique of his father’s life and character reveals a side of Gilmour’s own character which is similarly self-absorbed and at times self-destructive. And yet, the joy and intimacy of parenthood for a young father is ultimately the event which breaks the toxic spell. The beauty of new life, as natural and ordered as the disappearance of the befriended magpie, leads the narrator on a distinct, different and hopeful path from that taken by Williams in his eccentric isolation.
Charlie Gilmour is undoubtedly an accomplished and engaging writer. Whilst intensely personal in content, those looking for contrition in this book about his infamous 2010 Cenotaph incident will be disappointed. Gilmour always seemed an unlikely crime-wave but his account of that phase in his life is introspective and unapologetic.

Searching for meaning in absence

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