books

Praise for One Midsummer’s Day, 2023

‘Lyrical and startling by turn, he reveals the extraordinary in the apparently ordinary… A jewel of a book.’ Caroline Lucas MP

‘It isn’t 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 and he brings to this vast subject a scientist’s rigour and a poet’s expansive vision.’ Philip Marsden Spectator

‘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’ Kathleen Jamie, National Poet of Scotland

‘A beautiful, brilliant mind-stretching and soul-flying book. Genius’ Horatio Clare, A Single Swallow

‘I loved 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, How to Speak Whale

SHORTLISTED – Thwaites Wainwright Prize 2019 & The Richard Jefferies Society Award 2018

‘Impassioned, expert and always beautifully written, Our Place is a sobering and magnificent work. It is also a call to some kind of revolution.’ Christopher Hart, Sunday Times

‘Essential reading for anyone who cares about the future’ Henry Marsh, New Statesman Books of the Year

‘Like any great book – and this is a seriously great book, important and urgent – Our Place does so much more than merely fulfil its author’s admittedly wide-ranging aims. It is an elegy for a beloved landscape, an anguished lament, a manifesto, a call to arms’. Alex Preston, Observer

‘Thunderingly necessary .. Ths book – however measured, equable and intelligent – is a call for revolution.’ Richard Smyth, New Statesman

‘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’. Julian Glover Evening Standard, Books of the Year

WINNER – East Anglian Book of the Year Award & General Non Fiction Award, 2019

‘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‘. Spectator

‘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.’ Craig Brown. Mail on Sunday, Books of the Year

‘A master of short-form .. Cocker combines forensic observation with grander universal truths … Exquisite essential reading.’ BBC Wildlife

‘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!’ ***** Mail on Sunday

SHORTLISTED – Thwaites Wainwright Prize 2014, New Angle Prize 2014, East Anglian Book Award 2015, & the Society of Biology Book Award 2015

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

‘A nature journal full of beautiful, delicate observation’  Guardian

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

‘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.’ Horatio Clare, 5 stars, Daily Telegraph

‘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’. Melissa Harrison, The Times

SHORTLISTED – Society of Biology, General Biology Book 2014 & East Anglian Book Award 2014.

‘Sumptuous and poignant… Birds and People is a beautiful anthem to the history and diversity of the relationship between birds and human beings.’ Ruth Padel, Independent

‘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.’ Jim Crace


‘Packed with beauty, curiosity, fascination and wonder on every page, Birds and People … 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.’ Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday

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 … Written with grace, conscientious stewardship and unfettered love.’ Julie Zickefoose, Wall Street Journal

WINNER – New Angle Prize 2008

SHORTLISTED – Samuel Johnson Prize 2008

‘Fabulous… Like all classic works of natural history, it is an extraordinary revelation of the riches and wonders that lie at our doorsteps.’ Peter Marren, Independent

‘Unfolds with splendid variety, incorporating scientific exposition, environmental history, poetry and biography .. a significant beautiful work.’ New Statesman

‘Guaranteed to ensure that you nexver look at a crow in quite the same way again.’ Sir Andrew Motion, Guardian

‘I just finished reading Crow Country [Sept ’23]. Exquisite. The book has changed how I see things. Really wonderful.’ Scott Haas, Why Be Happy: Ukeireru – The Japanese Ways of Acceptance

BTO Book of the Year, 2005

‘The genius of this book is its quietly passionate accumulation of these fleeting encounters into a great map of observation across time and space .. The book is a triumph.’ Tim Dee, Greenery

‘Vast and amazingly beautiful .. Birds Britannica is a great and moving monument to Man’s love of nature.’ Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday

‘It took Mark Cocker eight years of painstaking research and beautiful writing to create this masterpiece’ Stuart Winter, Sunday Express

‘The publishers claim that Birds Britannica is “a bird book like no other”; and for once the hype is justifed .. a finely woven tapestry of biological science, folklore and personal anecdote that not only entertains but reinforces the central position birds have always held in British culture.’ Stephen Moss, Evening Standard

Other publications include:

A Tiger in the Sand: Selected Writings on Nature, Cape, 2006.

Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold: Europe’s Conflict with Tribal People, Jonathan Cape, London, 1998; Pimlico, (paperback).

Loneliness and Time British Travel Writing in the Twentieth Century, Secker and Warburg, London, 1992.

Richard Meinertzhagen Soldier, Scientist and Spy, Secker and Warburg, London, 1989; Mandarin (paperback), London, 1990.

A Himalayan Ornithologist The Life and Work of Brian Houghton Hodgson Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988 (with Carol Inskipp).

I have contributed to 34 other books and publications: including North Country, Karen Lloyd (ed), Saraband, 2023; The Wild Isles, Patrick Barkham (Head of Zeus), 2021; Birds New to Britain:1980-2004, Poyser, 2005, a reissue of J A Baker The Peregrine and The Hill of Summer, HarperCollins, 2010 (edited with John Fanshawe) and an introduction for Moth by artist Sarah Gillespie (2021) and a contribution to Biodiversity by artist Kurt Jackson 2021.