Mark Cocker – författare

Since 1972 Mark Cocker has been a member of a community of obsessional people, almost all male, who sacrifice most of their spare time, a good deal of money, sometimes their chances of a partner or family, even occasionally their lives, to watch birds. Birders is the story of this community, of its characters, its rules, its equipment and its adventures - many of which are hilariously funny, Birders is also a work of love - the story of what birds can do to the human heart.

One night Mark Cocker followed the roiling, deafening flock of rooks and jackdaws which regularly passed over his Norfolk home on their way to roost in the Yare valley. From the moment he watched the multitudes blossom as a mysterious dark flower above the night woods, these gloriously commonplace birds were unsheathed entirely from their ordinariness. They became for Cocker a fixation and a way of life.Cocker goes in search of them, journeying from the cavernous, deadened heartland of South England to the hills of Dumfriesshire, experiencing spectacular failures alongside magical successes and epiphanies. Step by step he uncovers the complexities of the birds' inner lives, the unforeseen richness hidden in the raucous crow song he calls 'our landscape made audible'.Crow Country is a prose poem in a long tradition of English pastoral writing. It is also a reminder that 'Crow Country' is not 'ours': it is a landscape which we cohabit with thousands of other species, and these richly complex fellowships cannot be valued too highly.One Midsummer's Day by Mark Cocker coming in June 2023.

'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

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 YearFor 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.

From one of our greatest nature writers: how swifts act as a window into the unity of the living world.Mark Cocker spends a single midsummer day tracing the flight of swifts - birds that connect continents, climates and species. What begins as a quiet act of observation expands into an awe-inspiring reflection on the interdependence of life on Earth. Cocker moves from the skies above Britain to the deep ocean currents, solar energy and ecosystems that sustain all living things. This is nature writing of rare insight, beauty and vision – a hymn to the marvel of movement and connection that binds our planet together.‘A jewel of a book’ Caroline Lucas‘A beautiful, brilliant, mind-stretching and soul-flying book. Genius.’ Horatio Clare

'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

Birds are inextricably entwined with British lifeBritish customs, more than 1,000 years of English literature and even the landscape itself, have all been enhanced by the presence of birds. This superb book pays tribute to the remarkable relationship forged between a nation and its most treasured national heritage. Birds Britannica concentrates on our social history and on the cultural links between humans and birds.What makes Birds Britannica special 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.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.WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HELEN MACDONALD, SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF H IS FOR HAWK

What does it mean to truly see the natural world? The Nature of Seeing is a celebration of the art and practice of paying close attention. Whether it is the sight of moonlight across a bedroom floor, or an owl as it hunts, or waxcap fungi that erupt across the fields overnight - Mark Cocker encourages us to reclaim our innate gift for wonder and to see the living world in all its infinite detail and mystery.Through a series of diary entries describing his encounters with the natural world, he interrogates how we see and how it affects us at the most profound levels. In precise and lyrical prose, he shows us that seeing is a creative act that can both transform us and change the world we share.Revelatory and profound, The Nature of Seeing is the culmination of a lifetime's love affair with the simple act of looking and all that it reveals.

Archipelago is one of the most important and influential literary magazines of the lasttwenty years. Running to twelve editions, it was edited by Andrew McNeillie, with theassistance later of James McDonald Lockhart, and began as an attempt to reimagine therelationships between the islands of Ireland and Britain. Archipelago has brought togetherestablished and emerging artists in creative conversations that have transformed the studyof islands, coasts and waterways. It journeys from the Shetlands to Cornwall, from theAran Islands to the coast of Yorkshire, tracing the cultures of diverse zones through someof the best in contemporary writing about place and people.This collection gathers poetry, prose and visual art in clusters grouped around the Irishand British archipelago, with contributions from an array of significant artists. It includesnewly commissioned work as well as an interview between Andrew McNeillie andRobert Macfarlane on the development of Archipelago across the years.

Hinterland is a quarterly, print and digital magazine dedicated to creative non-fiction. Hinterland's fourth issue celebrates the art of a beautifully turned piece of flash writing, with our Flash Non-Fiction Special: 40 pages of the best bite-sized writing around. Mark Cocker leads with a piece on the army ant, others consider topics as varied as migrant youth, New York through the decades, the troubling life of pets, inter-racial relationships, and the fall of dictators. Inside a stunning cover, created exclusively for Hinterland by artist Mia Hague, is an outstanding line-up of new creative non-fiction plus all our great regular features, including a beautiful photo essay by Lily Bungay and an interview with Tessa McWatt.