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...

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 heartlan...

J. A. Baker’s extraordinary classic of British nature writingDespite the association of peregrines with the wild, outer reaches of the British Isles, The Peregrine is set on the flat marshes of the Essex coast, where J A Baker spent a long winter looking and writing about the visitors from the uplands – peregrines that spend the winter hunting the huge flocks of pigeons and waders that share the desolate landscape with them.Including original diaries from which The Peregrin...

Reissue of J. A. Baker’s extraordinary classic of British nature writing, with an exclusive new afterword by Robert Macfarlane.J. A. Baker’s extraordinary classic of British nature writing was first published in 1967. Greeted with acclaim, it went on to win the Duff Cooper Prize, the pre-eminent literary prize of the time. Luminaries such as Ted Hughes, Barry Lopez and Andrew Motion have cited it as one of the most important books in twentieth-century nature writing.Despite...

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 them...

'After Mark Cocker’s glorious book, you will never look at a blackberry bush the same way again.'Philip Hoare, New StatesmanIn 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 bumb...

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 hum...

'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 ...

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...

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 describi...

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...

David Attenborough reads J. A. Baker’s extraordinary classic of British nature writing.The nation’s greatest voice, David Attenborough, reads J. A. Baker’s extraordinary classic of British nature writing, The Peregrine.J. A. Baker’s classic of British nature writing was first published in 1967. Greeted with acclaim, it went on to win the Duff Cooper Prize, the pre-eminent literary prize of the time. Luminaries such as Ted Hughes, Barry Lopez and An...