{"title":"Books by Mark Cocker","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781784701024","title":"Our Place","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Essential reading for anybody who cares about the future’ Henry Marsh, \u003ci\u003e*New Statesman \u003c\/i\u003eBooks of  the Year*\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA radical examination of Britain's relationship with the land by one of our greatest nature writers.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e**SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT GOLDEN BEER BOOK PRIZE 2019**\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe 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, \u003ci\u003eOur Place\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e‘A tour de force… By turns hopeful, melancholy, humorous and heartfelt’ BBC Wildlife Book of the Month\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43406050427058,"sku":"9781784701024","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781784701024_345ed283-6164-48cf-ae41-b26e8a6f5a3d.jpg?v=1786025876"},{"product_id":"9781529921991","title":"One Midsummer's Day","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eIt takes a whole universe to make one small black bird\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eCrow Country \u003c\/i\u003eand writer of \u003ci\u003eThe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eGuardian's \u003c\/i\u003eCountry Diary tells the story of all life on Earth through a single day spent in the company of swifts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'A jewel of a book' Caroline Lucas MP\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSwifts 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOver 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDrawing deeply on science, history, literature and a lifetime of close observation, \u003ci\u003eOne Midsummer's Day\u003c\/i\u003e is a dazzling and wide-ranging celebration of all life on Earth by one of our greatest nature writers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'A nature classic for the new century' Jim Perrin, author of \u003ci\u003eSnowdon\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44581226217650,"sku":"9781529921991","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781529921991_e034d6f8-fce7-4366-8647-2b0d22487dbd.jpg?v=1786023430"},{"product_id":"9780099593478","title":"Claxton","description":"\u003cp\u003e'After Mark Cocker’s glorious book, you will never look at a blackberry bush the same way again.' \u003cbr\u003ePhilip Hoare, \u003ci\u003eNew Statesman\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShortlisted for the Royal Society of Biology Book Award, the Jarrold East Anglian Book Awards, the New Angle Prize and theThwaites Wainwright Prize\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56223819137397,"sku":"9780099593478","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780099593478_fe168fc0-6cd6-46b9-b45a-d1898f196009.jpg?v=1786011619"},{"product_id":"9780099485087","title":"Crow Country","description":"\u003cp\u003eOne 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCocker 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'.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eCrow Country \u003c\/i\u003eis 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eOne Midsummer's Day\u003c\/i\u003e by Mark Cocker coming in June 2023.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56223940968821,"sku":"9780099485087","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780099485087_19fc0828-1353-4726-a850-329d90cbec1b.jpg?v=1786011354"},{"product_id":"9781529111330","title":"A Claxton Diary","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAnother beautiful, revelatory country diary from one of the best nature writers in Britain.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'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.' \u003ci\u003eMail On Sunday\u003c\/i\u003e, Books of the Year\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn turn these encounters have then been converted into literary epiphanies that are now a widely celebrated part of his work. In \u003ci\u003eA\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eClaxton Diary \u003c\/i\u003ehe 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’.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56302596587893,"sku":"9781529111330","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781529111330_b32f22cd-a3b9-4242-8d9e-e8379308fc4f.jpg?v=1786022579"},{"product_id":"9781784743789","title":"Birds Britannica","description":"Unlike any other bird book, and not an identification guide, this handsome cultural study of all the birds in Britain, is a magnificent achievement and a work of huge importance. An attempt to describe the interaction of birds and humans, it captures the essence of why birds matter.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56305117299061,"sku":"9781784743789","price":70.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781784743789_6ad68913-5950-4f7a-85dc-14e38d37e079.jpg?v=1786025632"},{"product_id":"9781843517825","title":"Archipelago","description":"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.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56308084048245,"sku":"9781843517825","price":22.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781843517825_031e6db9-5e67-4d08-80d2-e14514f8025e.jpg?v=1786028063"},{"product_id":"the-nature-of-seeing","title":"The Nature of Seeing","description":"'The Nature of Seeing will transform how you view the world around us' Martha Kearney'A treasure trove of a book... Mark Cocker is one of Britain's greatest writers' Ben Rawlence'There can be no better companion for anybody interested in and concerned about the living world' Jim CraceWhat 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.   'Through his eyes, the natural world appears more layered, more diverse, more wonderful' Philip MarsdenThe perfect Christmas gift for nature lovers, with beautiful illustrations by Carry Akroyd","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57507637952885,"sku":"9781787336469","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781787336469.jpg?v=1787042647"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-mark-cocker.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}