Razor in the Wind

Only once before has a fascination for a falcon resulted in a prose-poetry novel.

Forty years since J. A. Baker’s The Peregrine, here comes Razor in the Wind.

This novel follows a pair of hobbies across the skies of their summer, vividly painted in poetic vignettes based on years of observations, here condensed to a single season.

Only the most spectacularly successful of hunts will mean the survival of the hobbies’ young and the next generation of falcons, before autumn sees them and their newly fledged family leave for Africa.

Based entirely on personal observations and a rare insight into a falcon’s world, what follows has almost never been done before.

Unique in the complete absence of any person in a novel – even the author is almost entirely silent and invisible – this book is nonetheless a meditative and human one, in which the reader can soar with the hobby and live the season while lost in nature.

The author has long been writing poems & prose-poetry inspired by his birding and nature in general encouraged from an early age by J. A. Baker’s seminal book The Peregrine. Some of the author’s work has been published online in ‘Birdforum’s’ thread ‘Your Birding Day’.
When a pair of Hobbies bred on his patch near Lymm, Cheshire, returning each spring from Africa, they became something of an obsession. The birds and the words they inspired with their aerial prowess and beauty became the beginnings of this book.
Years of observation accumulated and condensed to form this volume.
Following his retirement last year (from the Civil Service) he was able, finally, to complete the novel.