Further Field Notes from a Small Planet

A Claxton Diary

Another beautiful, revelatory country diary from one of the best nature writers in Britain.

A spellbinding nature diary that’s up there with the greatest… [Cocker] regularly follows up a beady description with a wild, glorious overview, followed by an astonishing fact or two… Hurrah for Mark Cocker! *****

Being a naturalist, Cocker’s great strength is in the breadth of his senses: his essays seem to cover almost everything he has seen, heard or smelled in the land around his home. He writes clearly, and with a style that has a ring of poetry about it without being pretentious or precious… Spending time with his acutely observant essays will convince many readers that the Great Barrier Reef and vast jungles of Africa can be understood best only by first understanding the startling drama, diversity and complicated natural dynamics of a humble corner of Britain.

If you’ve never read Mark Cocker, then you must. His style is sharp, selfless, and wonderfully evocative, his knowledge deep and wide-ranging but lightly borne, his curiosity joyful and infectious.

If you can’t get out to enjoy the spring weather, immerse yourself in the natural world with Mark Cocker… his writing transports you there.

If you already know Mark Cocker’s work, you’ll need no persuading to buy this – if you don’t, treat yourself to a very fine collection of nature essays.

A Claxton Diary is a collection of his finest essays written on wildlife and encounters with nature.

[Cocker] has a dream-like poetic edge, a touch of surreality that tips over into gentle humour… Cocker’s gift is that he can make you look – as he does – at blackbirds in a new way, or, shifting to the micro-scale, at ants bustling about in the cracks between paving slabs.

A master of short-form writing… Cocker combines forensic observation of minutiae with grander universal truths… Exquisite essential reading.

Mark Cocker is one of the many modern nature writers who I admire... and his latest book, A Claxton Diary, is as well written as all his others.

Another beautiful, revelatory country diary from one of the best nature writers in Britain. 
 
'If you’ve never read Mark Cocker, then you must. His style is sharp, selfless, and wonderfully evocative, his knowledge deep and wide-ranging but lightly borne, his curiosity joyful and infectious.' Mail On Sunday, Books of the Year 
 
For seventeen years, as part of his daily writerly routine, the author and naturalist Mark Cocker has taken a two-mile walk down to the river from his cottage on the edge of the Norfolk Broads National Park. Over the course of those 10,000 daily paces he has learnt the art of patience to observe a butterfly, a bird, flower, bee, deer, otter or fly and to take pleasure in all the other inhabitants of his parish, no matter how seemingly insignificant. 
 
In turn these encounters have then been converted into literary epiphanies that are now a widely celebrated part of his work. In A Claxton Diary he has gathered some of the finest short essays that he has ever written on wildlife. They range over almost everything he can see, touch or smell, from the minute to the cosmic, from a strange micromoth called yellow-barred longhorn to that fiercest of winter storms the so-called ‘Beast from the East’. 
 
From the marvellous to the macabre, Cocker tries to capture nature without flinching and in its entirety. In so doing he provides us with a vision of an English country parish that for intimacy and precise detail is comparable with Gilbert White’s diary on Selbourne. Above all he reminds us that we are all just members of one miraculous family, fashioned from sunlight and the dust from old stars.

Birds Britannica

Now in its second edition with a new introduction by Helen Macdonald, a unique, beautiful, comprehensive cultural and social study, species by species, of all the birds in Britain. A companion volume to Flora Britannica and Bugs Britannica

Richard Mabey (Author) Richard Mabey is the father of modern nature writing in the UK. Since 1972 he has written some forty influential books, including the prize-winning Nature Cure, Gilbert White: a Biography, and Flora Britannica. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Vice-President of the Open Spaces Society. 
 
He spent the first half of his life amongst the Chiltern beechwoods, and now lives in Norfolk in a house surrounded by ash trees. Mark Cocker (Author) Mark Cocker is an author and naturalist whose thirteen books include works of biography, history, literary criticism and memoir. His book Crow Country was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2008 and won the New Angle Prize for Literature in 2009. With the photographer David Tipling he published Birds and People in 2013, a massive survey described by the Times Literary Supplement as 'a major literary event as well as an ornithological one.' Our Place: Can We Save Britain's Wildlife Before It Is Too Late? was described by the Sunday Times as 'impassioned, expert and always beautifully written ... a sobering and magnificent work.' His most recent book, A Claxton Diary, won the East Anglian Book of the Year Award in 2019. Helen Macdonald (Introducer) Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, naturalist and historian of science. Their books include H is for Hawk, which won many prizes including the Costa Book of the Year and the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, and the Sunday Times bestselling Vesper Flights. They live in Suffolk with their two parrots.

The British love their birds, which are inextricably entwined with every aspect of their island life. British customs, more than 1,000 years of English literature, the very fabric of society, even the landscape itself, have all been enhanced by the presence of birds. Highly acclaimed on first publication, this superb book pays tribute to the remarkable relationship forged between a nation and its most treasured national heritage. 
 
Birds Britannica is a unique publication of immense importance. Neither an identification guide nor a behavioural study (although both these subjects enter its field), it concentrates on our social history and on the cultural links between humans and birds. 
 
What makes Birds Britannica of special significance is the inclusion of observations and experiences from more than 1,000 naturalists and bird lovers. These contributions from the public touch on avian ecology; the lore and language of birds; their myths, the art and literature they have inspired; birds as food; and the crucial role they play in our sense of place and the changing seasons. 
 
Birds Britannica took eight years to research and was assembled by a team that included some of the finest writers and image-makers of British wildlife. On one level, it is a remarkable collection of humorous stories, field observations and tales of joy, wonder and occasional woe; on another, it is a nationwide chronicle. Scholarly and wide-ranging, a mix of the traditional and the contemporary, Birds Britannica is a comprehensive record of birdlife in the early years of the twenty-first century. No other book has dealt so completely with the rich connections between birds and humans; Birds Britannica captures the very essence of that relationship, and explores why birds matter and why we care.

Can We Save Britain’s Wildlife Before It Is Too Late?

Our Place

A radical examination of Britain's relationship with the land, by one of our greatest nature writers.

Essential reading for anybody who cares about the future.

A seriously great book, important and urgent… As soon as I finished Our Place, I packaged up my copy and sent it off to Michael Gove… this is the kind of book that demands action.

Best known as one of our foremost nature writers, Mark Cocker spent several years researching this tour de force… stuffed with eye-opening statistics… by turns hopeful, melancholy and humorous… [Our Place] is heartfelt.

Thunderingly necessary… Cocker on this kind of form – eloquent, practical, dogged and wise – is the sort of dynamic chivvying force [conservation] will always need… the book he’s written – however measured, equable and intelligent – is a call for revolution.

Impassioned, expert and always beautifully written… Our Place is a sobering and magnificent work.

It is easy to be angry about environmental destruction; easy to demand change without hope but in this potent, elegant and influencing telling of the story of what we have done to England's wildlife, Mark Cocker archives something more: a reasoned tone in a radical cause. If you care about our country, read it.

What a relief it is to have this subject explored without the usual diatribes and righteous hysteria. Cocker’s quiet tone carries great authority and… [Our Place] deserves to command respect and wide attention.

A fierce polemic by an eminent ornithologist about Britain’s denuded natural habitat.

Fascinating… Our Place is a brave book... It will undoubtedly ruffle what few figurative feathers we have left.

A new book by Mark Cocker is a major event, and [Our Place] is no exception… Cocker has always been brilliant at considering our relationship with nature… You can come away from it feeling that something can be done, that we can save Britain’s wildlife, if only there is the will to turn well-meaning generalities into action. The clock is ticking.

A superb new book by the naturalist Mark Cocker that is fast becoming highly influential… The environment secretary is telling friends he found it ‘powerfully persuasive’.

I kept thinking of the raw power of Mark Cocker’s astonishing Our Place, which was brilliant because it was so particular and familiar in the natural world it anatomised.

An artful mix of lyrical writing and assured analysis that amounts to a quiet manifesto for action.

More urgent than any of Cocker’s previous writing… This resourceful and eloquent book could prove to be important.

This is the best book on the state of nature since George Monbiot’s Feral and deserves to be read just as widely… a very good read.

This book contains some exquisite writing about nature, but it is always powerfully and insistently ground in “its cause” … A radical polemic in the tradition of Hazlitt and Cobbett

A new book by Mark Cocker is a major event and his latest is a work of sweeping ambition

Important… ambitious… [Cocker] is a superb writer

A compelling history of nature conservation and why it matters, it is worth your time

Our Place… is a work of serious and sustained advocacy – passionate and committed… elements are fused in the writing, along with many apparent digressions and asides, in a way that gives the book a richly textured feel… the argument advances on several fronts simultaneously and in more than one dimension, in a complex literary ecology matching his subject.

Mark Cocker… writes with superb understanding

A lyrical and intensely personal account… an excellent and important book… a wake-up call to us all.

Birdwatch, **Birders' Choice Awards 2018, Book of the Year**

'Essential reading for anybody who cares about the future’ Henry Marsh, *New Statesman Books of the Year* 
 
A radical examination of Britain's relationship with the land by one of our greatest nature writers. 
 
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT GOLDEN BEER BOOK PRIZE 2019** 
 
The British love their countryside more than almost any other nation, yet they live in one of the most denatured landscapes on Earth. From the flatlands of Norfolk to the tundra-like expanse of the Flow Country in northern Scotland, Mark Cocker sets out on a personal quest through the British countryside attempting to solve this puzzle. Radical, provocative and original, Our Place tackles some of the central issues of our time whilst mapping out a future in which this overcrowded island of ours could be a place fit not just for human occupants but also for its billions of wild citizens. 
 
‘A tour de force… By turns hopeful, melancholy, humorous and heartfelt’ BBC Wildlife Book of the Month

Field Notes from a Small Planet

Claxton

After the massive, world-spanning, unanimously acclaimed Birds and People Mark Cocker looks in fascinating detail at his home parish in Norfolk and its wildlife

After Mark Cocker’s glorious book, you will never look at a blackberry bush the same way again.

A nature journal full of beautiful, delicate observation

A beautifully-written account of one man’s passion for the natural world

If your eye has ever been caught by a moth, owl, jay or ash tree, Claxton has something new to tell about it, about Britain, and about life – which is an infinite compilation of exquisite detail.

To be astonished by nature, look no further than Claxton.

Cocker’s profound knowledge, uncanny ability to observe and heartliftingly exact prose make Claxton one of those books that transforms the way you see your own home parish.

The book is spectacular… Brilliant natural-history writing.

At once charming and unsentimental, these short pieces educate and delight.

Cocker is a sharp-eyed, knowledgeable and accessible writer… Makes one  look again at the world outdoors with renewed awe and wonder.

[Cocker] is enraptured, passionate and down-to-earth, and never stops wanting to learn and delve deeper into his ordinary, extraordinary English countryside.

Cocker is a sharp-eyed, knowledgeable and accessible writer. The way in which he celebrates the rhythms of a year makes one look again at the world outdoors with renewed awe and wonder.

[Cocker] observes with patience, acuity and in prose so exquisite it borders on poetry… You feel as though you’re by the side of the most expert guide you could hope for, being taught to marvel at wonders of nature.

He writes both robustly and exquisitely, seeing into things through the prism of language with great craft and a sense of seamless ease.

A heartfelt plea to treasure and protect the diversity and richness of our indigenous wildlife.

It’s a celebration of wonder that lies in our everyday experiences, with magical and concise, but inspiring writing!

[Cocker’s] writing is characterised by close observation and a tangible sense of the progression through the seasons.

His year-long cycle of daily writings from a single valley in Norfolk proves the infinite variety to be found in a confined space.

Cocker has produced a nature journal full of beautiful, delicate observation, intense drama and new understanding… Claxton is a book full of tastes, sounds and smells as well as sights.

An immensely satisfying and calming read, this can be savoured and enjoyed.

A cycle of jewelled, profoundly knowledgeable essays by one of our three finest contemporary nature writers.

Cocker poses straight questions about our relationship with the natural world and whose job it is to protect is. This skilfully written, lyrically observer book will make you feel it’s a worthwhile job.

If you want an antidote to the season, as one year turns coldly into the next, this book is perfect.

I defy anyone not to be moved by some of his more remarkable encounters with an amazing cast of creatures and his profound love for his landscape.

A lyrical writer, Cocker lucidly conveys his knowledge and love of nature’s details that most of us fail to observe.

Reading this book is a great enjoyment in itself, but also helps elucidate why the world outside is so very important to our inner selves.

Cocker writes with such infectious enthusiasm that blackberry picking becomes a thrilling pursuit

Sparklingly tight prose … a delight to read

Like the best nature books, Cocker’s will infect readers with enthusiasm for going out and noticing things

It’s as satisfyingly poetic as it is poetically satisfying.

'After Mark Cocker’s glorious book, you will never look at a blackberry bush the same way again.' 
Philip Hoare, New Statesman 
 
In 2001 Mark Cocker moved to Claxton, a small village in Norfolk. In a series of daily writings spanning the course of a year he explores his relationship to the landscape he lives in, to nature and to all the living things around him - the birds, plants, trees, mammals, hoverflies, moths, butterflies, bush crickets, grasshoppers, ants and bumblebees. Passionate, astonishing and inspiring, this book is a celebration of the wonder that lies in our everyday experience. 
 
Shortlisted for the Royal Society of Biology Book Award, the Jarrold East Anglian Book Awards, the New Angle Prize and theThwaites Wainwright Prize

Birds and People

The definitive groundbreaking book on the relationship between birds and humankind, with contributions from bird enthusiasts from all over the world. Endorsed by the RSPB and BirdLife International.

This is a uniquely beautiful and engrossing volume, absolutely drenched in knowledge and love - and more loaded with narrative than any wildlife book I’ve encountered before. It has literature, history, philosophy, folklore, travelogue, biography... Anyone who is interested in natural history will want a copy.

Birds and People is one of the great naturalist books of our time.

A sumptuous encyclopedia of humanity’s relationship with birds.

Encyclopedic and spellbinding… The sparkling prose never flags, and it is marvelously illustrated by the photographs of David Tipling.

Sumptuous and poignant… Birds and People is a beautiful anthem to the history and diversity of the relationship between birds and human beings.

If ever a book was timely, it is this gorgeously produced 600-page compendium of ornith- logical facts, images, myths and narratives.

David Tipling’s photographs…are irresistible. They are a feast of colour, history, display and insight… This treasure possesses the timelessness and the authority of a genuine magnum opus. It is encyclopaedic in its reach, covering birds in art, literature, dress, heraldry, industry, commerce, cooking, hunting, farming, philosophy, folklore and delight. It stretches way beyond natural history, but that is in there too. A book for all birds and all people.

In 600 pages enlivened with David Tipling’s photographs, Mark Cocker has built a magnificent avian ark: a book of everything birdy and birdish, and worth saving from countless and enduring entanglements with Homo sapiens… These pages are rich, sustaining and magically suggestive – all at the same time.

Birds and People is primarily a way of looking at our own complex history, through the prism of nature. It is also a beautiful volume, not least because of David Tipling’s excellent photographs… The results are stunning.

Packed with beauty, curiosity, fascination and wonder on every page, Birds and People is probably best not wolfed down but savoured bit by bit. It is a truly exceptional work, soaring in its scope, boundless in its interest, with an ambition matched only by its achievement… Strikes me as the sort of masterpiece that only comes along once or twice a decade.

A tapestry that is by turns fascinating, delightful, surprising and grim. Birds and People rewards the idle browser and will be an important addition to the shelves of anyone who cares about how we interact with the non-human world or what sort of creatures we are becoming… David Tipling’s photographs…are gorgeous.

A vast, ambitious and surprisingly personal overview of what birds mean to human beings... Birds and People is a dense, weighty delight, to be dipped into again and again as curiosity commands. Written with grace, conscientious stewardship and unfettered love, the book is a transformative look at the feathered dinosaurs that, despite all we have done to them, still grace our fields, forests and skies. Birds and People is an encyclopedia with a heart.

A fascinating examination of the relationship between the human and avian worlds… This important book is a clarion call to treasure our birds – or risk losing them forever.

A monumental new account of the role birds play in human life.

The greatest joy of this great book is that it is unfinishable as well as unputdownable.

A delightful duet between nature writer Mark Cocker and wildlife photographer David Tipling.

Birds and People isn’t just a book for bird enthusiasts, but a thoughtful look at how one seemingly common creature can influence and enrich so much of our lives.

It’s a project with the ‘wow’ factor – and one that has you reaching for the superlatives.

Encyclopedic in content, sumptuous in production and has the gripping, intensive quality of a classic potboiler. This wonderful book should never be confined to a dusty life on a shelf but regarded as a trusty, companion ready to give wise knowledge, faithful service and boundless enjoyment at every opportunity.

[Cocker’s] magnificent new book is a work of encyclopedic proportion, a labour of love and, in unusual ways, a collaboration – and not just with the photographer David Tipling, whose images are as original and brilliantly distinguished  as their feathered subjects.

Seven years in the making, Birds and People is a doorstep of a book that becomes a lifetime’s investment once owned, revealing many layers of both human and animal nature in the most absorbing of ways. It is as much a work of anthropology as ornithology, and all the better for it. Quite possibly Mark Cocker’s masterpiece.

Magnificent… 600 stunningly illustrated and gorgeously produced pages.

Visually rich, historically fascinating and vast in both scope and scale, this is a wonderful addition to any bookcase.

Cocker has collected hundreds of anecdotes that illustrate the relationship between humans and birds… He writes movingly about the part that birds play in our culture.

For the unashamed bird-lover…  A meticulous and caring study of how humans think about, imagine, use, misuse and abuse the most miraculous of our fellow creatures.

A magnificently compendious account of the connections (and lack of them) between the human and avian world… a marvellous object too.

Birds and People by Mark Cocker and David Tipling is almost too wonderful a book to give away.

Mark Cocker’s Birds and People, is 535 pages of text and David Tipling’s luminous photographs: a true magnum opus, revealing the whole ghastly story of man’s long exploitation of our feathered friends.

A remarkable work, taking in every family of birds on earth and the way humans have interacted them.

Well laid out and designed and fluidly written, the book seems the best yet on its complex subject.

The intricate research of Mark Cocker and the award-winning photography of David Tipling make this incredible feat of research one of the year’s finest examples of outdoor literature. Humanity’s bond with these feathered beasts is explored with such depth that it boggles the mind as to how the author pulled this overwhelming project together with such success.

The bird book I never knew I needed until I had it. Far from a reference book, it is full of stories – mythology, folklore, personal tales – and that is what makes it so beguiling.

Authoritative yet readable… The definitive book on the subject.

A sumptuous book full of beautiful photos… It gives you hope that birds will be conserved.

There are 10,500 species of bird worldwide and wherever they occur people marvel at their glorious colours and their beautiful songs. We also trap and consume birds of every kind. 
 
Yet birds have not just been good to eat. Their feathers, which keep us warm or adorn our costumes, give birds unique mastery over the heavens. Throughout history their flight has inspired the human imagination so that birds are embedded in our religions, folklore, music and arts. 
 
Vast in both scope and scale, Birds and People explores and celebrates this relationship and draws upon Mark Cocker’s 40 years of observing and thinking about birds. Part natural history and part cultural study, it describes and maps the entire spectrum of our engagements with birds, drawing in themes of history, literature, art, cuisine, language, lore, politics and the environment. In the end, this is a book as much about us as it is about birds. 
 
Birds and People has been stunningly illustrated by one of Europe’s best wildlife photographers, David Tipling, who has travelled in 39 countries on seven continents to produce a breathtaking and unique collection of photographs. The book is as important for its visual riches as it is for its groundbreaking content. 
 
Birds and People is also exceptional in that the author has solicited contributions from people worldwide. Personal anecdotes and stories have come from more than 650 individuals in 81 different countries. They range from university academics to Mongolian eagle hunters, and from Amerindian shamans to some of the most celebrated writers of our age. The sheer multitude of voices in this global chorus means that Birds and People is both a source book on why we cherish birds and a powerful testament to their importance for all humanity.

Selected Writings on Nature

A Tiger in the Sand

A rich and wide-ranging collection of pieces by Mark Cocker, the author of Birds Britannica and one of Britain's very best writers on nature.

In seven works of non-fiction, especially in Birders and the universally acclaimed Birds Britannica, Mark Cocker has established himself as one of the foremost writers on nature and wilderness. In his most lyrical work to date, he has drawn together the best of his writing on wildlife, mainly taken from columns for the Guardian and Guardian Weekly. 
 
These carefully distilled articles, over a hundred in all, illustrate some of his most enduring themes over the last twenty years - the magical dynamism of birds, as well as the subtle beauty, vast skies and wildlife riches of the Norfolk landscape. In its celebration of the natural world, the hugely varied selection also demonstrates a concern to champion the despised and neglected - rats, gulls, crows (the 'Black Beasts' of his first section) - as much as it explores some of the most charismatic creatures on Earth - penguins, whales, lions and elephants. Cocker is equally good at evoking the commonplace mysteries of garden blackbirds and thrush's song, as he is the exotic otherness of mountain gorillas or the one-horned rhinoceros. 
 
With its attention to detail, especially the sharpness of perception and the precise use of language, the writing in A Tiger in the Sand shows qualities more usually associated with poetry than with prose.

Mark Cocker

Lyrical and startling by turn, he reveals the extraordinary in the apparently ordinary... A jewel of a book

Not just a glorious celebration of swifts but of their place amid the panoply of life on Earth... Cocker is one of our greatest living naturalists... He brings to this vast subject a scientist's rigour and a poet's expansive vision

A beautiful, brilliant, mind-stretching and soul-flying book. Genius

Horatio Clare, author of A Single Swallow

His grandest effort yet. Told as a series of reflections that fly through his mind in the course of a single day watching swifts from his garden in Norfolk, he ranges across topics as widely as a swift ranges across the sky... Magnificent

A rich and elegant exploration that takes us to unexpected places. With the swift as our lift, we leave the garden on an extraordinary tour that takes in the moon, amongst many other wonderful destinations

Tristan Gooley, author of How to Read a Tree

Mark Cocker's ode to a remarkable species makes a powerful case for the value of awe in a time of ecological grief

In his mission to restore a sense of wonder to life's small and ordinary things, Mark Cocker takes us on a soaring journey from the Cretaceous period to a summer's day in his English garden... Lyrical, grand and full of reverence

Cocker brings both nostalgia and universal connections to the swifts' majestic, sky-high adventures

A stunning celebration – and commemoration – of swifts

It's not often I am moved to tears. I wish you could reprint the last chapter of One Midsummer's Day as a free-standing essay and give it out to every schoolchild in the country

An outright classic of his genre... If you thrill to the swifts' arrival (and mourn their annual too-soon departure), this book will enchant as they do... A nature classic for the new century

A thoughtful combination of the personal and the ornithological

Mark Cocker has achieved something extraordinary. Crafted from a lifetime of watching and adoring nature, he presents to us the whole universe, reflected in the dark eye of a sleek brown bird. At once intimate and expansive, this book is a lovesong to swifts, a paean to nature and a call to protect our unique and fragile planet

A passionately written study of these mysterious "creatures of air", fascinating and constantly thought-provoking

I loved this book. Reading it, I realised I needed this book. I felt awe, at the story Mark Cocker tells and the ambition in telling it. He pulls it off and has created a masterpiece unlike anything else - a gentle deep-time joyride, a paean to a small black bird and to all of existence. Literally wonder-full

Tom Mustill, author of How to Speak Whale

As thoroughly researched and elegantly written as one would expect from Mark Cocker, one of the leading nature writers of our time. More than just an account of a species of bird, remarkable though that bird is, Cocker goes much further to show how the life of swifts is deeply entangled with the entirety of life on Earth

Peter Reason, author of In Search of Grace

Situates both swifts and humans in the universe in a way that I've not seen done for any species... A beautifully poised book

A wonderful book that weaves half a century of natural history expertise around a vanishing bird. Informative, personal, universal and thrilling

Roger Morgan-Grenville, author of Across a Waking Land

If like me you love swifts, this one is for you, but its scope and appeal takes in a far wider range of summer wildlife, too

A book of ambition, intellect and compassion

A delightful book that is packed full of facts, emotion, beautiful prose, and hard-hitting messages

Swifts and the Story of Life on Earth

It takes a whole universe to make one small black bird 
 
The bestselling author of Crow Country and writer of The Guardian's Country Diary tells the story of all life on Earth through a single day spent in the company of swifts. 
 
'A jewel of a book' Caroline Lucas MP 
 
Swifts are among the most extraordinary of all birds. Their migrations span continents and their twelve-week stopover, when they pause to breed in European rooftops, is the very definition of summer. They may nest in our homes but much about their lives passes over our heads. No birds are more wreathed in mystery. Captivated, Mark Cocker sets out to capture their essence. 
 
Over the course of one day in midsummer he devotes himself to his beloved black birds as they spiral overhead. Yet this is also a book about so much more. Swifts are a prism through which Cocker explores the profound interconnections of the whole biosphere. 
 
From the deep-sea thermal vents where life was born to the 15 million degrees at the core of our Sun, he shows that life is a singular and glorious continuum. These birds without borders are a perfect symbol to express the unity of the living planet. But they also illuminate how no creature, least of all ourselves, can be said to be alive in isolation. We are all inextricably connected. 
 
Drawing deeply on science, history, literature and a lifetime of close observation, One Midsummer's Day is a dazzling and wide-ranging celebration of all life on Earth by one of our greatest nature writers. 
 
'A nature classic for the new century' Jim Perrin, author of Snowdon

Mark Cocker

Praise for One Midsummer's Day

Lyrical and startling by turn, he reveals the extraordinary in the apparently ordinary... A jewel of a book

Not just a glorious celebration of swifts but of their place amid the panoply of life on Earth... Cocker is one of our greatest living naturalists... He brings to this vast subject a scientist's rigour and a ...

A beautiful, brilliant, mind-stretching and soul-flying book. Genius

Lyrical and startling by turn, he reveals the extraordinary in the apparently ordinary... A jewel of a book

Not just a glorious celebration of swifts but of their place amid the panoply of life on Earth... Cocker is one of our greatest living naturalists... He brings to this vast subject a scientist's rigour and a ...

A beautiful, brilliant, mind-stretching and soul-flying book. Genius

Lyrical and startling by turn, he reveals the extraordinary in the apparently ordinary... A jewel of a book

Not just a glorious celebration of swifts but of their place amid the panoply of life on Earth... Cocker is one of our greatest living naturalists... He brings to this vast subject a scientist's rigour and a ...

A beautiful, brilliant, mind-stretching and soul-flying book. Genius

Books by Mark Cocker

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