Mark Cocker
Encyclopedia
Mark Cocker is a British
author and naturalist
. He lives and works deep in the Norfolk
countryside with his wife Mary Muir and two daughters in claxton. All of his eight books have dealt with modern responses to the wild, whether found in landscape, human societies or in other species.
Cocker has written extensively for British newspapers and magazines including The Guardian
, The Daily Telegraph
, The Times
, The Independent
and BBC Wildlife
. He has written a regular 'Country Diary
' column in the Guardian since 1988 and a wildlife column in the international subscribers' edition, the Guardian Weekly from 1996-2002. He reviews regularly for the Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement.
Derbyshire
, the gateway to the Peak District National Park. This early access to the spectacular limestone
flora
of the Derbyshire Dales
and the specialised upland birds of the Dark Peak
, provided formative experiences in his evolution as a naturalist.
He studied English Literature
at the University of East Anglia
(1978–1982), where he became immersed in East Anglia’s nationally important wildlife landscapes, including the North Norfolk
coast, Breckland
and the Broads
. These became the inspiration for the vast majority of 900+ articles on wildlife, published in national and regional newspapers.
An active environmentalist
, Cocker worked for the RSPB (1985), English Nature
(now Natural England
1985-6) and BirdLife International
(1988-9). In 1998 he received a Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship to explore the cultural importance of birds in West Africa
(Benin
and Cameroon
).
and Nepal
. This proved to be the background to two illuminating biographical studies: A Himalayan Ornithologist: The Life and Work of Brian Houghton Hodgson
and Richard Meinertzhagen
: Soldier Scientist and Spy. These examined two remarkable figures from the age of Empire
, radically different in personality, but united by the polymathic range of their interests.
Hodgson was the Honourable East India Company’s resident (proto Ambassador
) in Nepal
, where he was a scholar of almost every branch of zoology
, from fish and amphibians, to birds and mammals. He was also a scholar of Himalayan
languages and of Mahayana Buddhism. Six weeks spent in a Tibet
an Buddhist monastery led to Cocker's involvement in this book.
Meinertzhagen, on the other hand, was a big-game hunter, a soldier, naturalist, minor political figure, writer, intelligence officer, explorer and diarist. Cocker's biography on this neglected demon and giant, received widespread critical acclaim and was judged, with Mark Hudson
‘s Our Grandmothers‘ Drums and Bill Bryson
‘s The Lost Continent, one of the highlights for Secker and Warburg
in 1989. The novelist William Boyd (writer)
, who had drawn on some of Meinertzhagen’s writings in his novel An Ice-Cream War
, said of Cocker's biographical study of Meinertzhagen:
Cocker's next two books reflected his darkening perception of Britain’s wider imperial
impact upon the lands and peoples that they explored and occupied.
In the 1990s Cocker shifted his focus from the orthodox biography of colonial
figures, to a moral reflection upon the real impact of European Empire, this resulted in his next two books: Loneliness and Time: British Travel Writing in the Twentieth Century and Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold: Europe’s Conflict with Tribal People.
Loneliness and Time is an attempt to provide both a generic understanding of the importance of travel and foreign lands to the British psyche
, and an investigation of the intellectual value and literary canons of the travel book. It received mixed reviews.
Loneliness and Time was followed by the exhaustively researched and highly acclaimed indictment of European exploitation and destruction of indiginenous people, Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold, which Cocker considered his most important book. The work focuses on four collisions between Europeans and indigenous cultures: the conquest of Mexico
, the British onslaught on the Tasmanian Aborigines
, the uprooting of the Apaches, and the German campaign against the tribes of Southwest Africa.
The book was praised and criticised on both sides of the Atlantic for similar reasons. Among its critics, Ronald Wright
, noted its "shaky existential dichotomy between Europeans and “tribal peoples”", while fellow historian Alfred Crosby
suggested that "Cocker has written the kind of book we needed a generation ago, when our concept of history was profoundly Eurocentric, but surely now all of us given to reading history books are doubtful about the immaculate gloriousness of white civilization".
However, as already said, it also received praise. Charles Nicholl
wrote that "Cocker succeeds in finding a tone appropriate to the matter: he has a journalistic sense of impact and a powerful command of historical narrative. This is a powerful book, communicating its fierce indignation without recourse to polemic.", while Ronald Wright
stated "The most powerful theme of Mark Cocker’s books is … his vivid map of hell into which people can so easily descend when they have ideology, means and opportunity."
. The best known is the epic Birds Britannica, a work of nature study, rich with literary, historical and cultural references. It was based on Flora Britannica by the acclaimed nature writer Richard Mabey
, who initiated its sister volume. However Mabey’s ill health meant that it was written entirely by Cocker. As Philip Marsden
puts it:
Cocker's work on the ubiquitous crow
is in similar spirit: a rare combination of natural history
and Cultural anthropology
. Crow Country is Cocker’s most successful book to date, receiving widespread critical acclaim. More than simply a long term study of a 'common bird', Crow Country represents a fusion of acute natural historical observations with fine writing, which Cocker defines as the poetry of fact. Of Crow Country, Cocker said:
The importance of being 'true' to the nature of the subject is apparent, but so too is his desire to discover the wealth of cultural significance attached to it. Like the natural detective's search for the perpetrator, Cocker's investigations are laden with significance. Reminiscent of an earlier age of scientific investigation, the 'whole picture' perspective being not unlike that of Francis Bacon
who wrote in a similar vein:
This unique combination of natural scientist, environmentalist and cultural anthropologist is most evident in his latest project Birds and People.
and Natural history
author Jonathan Elphick
, is http://www.birdsandpeople.org/class='greylink1' onMouseover='ShowPop("20541",this,"noimage.gif", event)' onMouseout='HidePop("20541")' href="/topics/Birds_and_People">Birds and People
]. Birds and People
is a ten-year long, groundbreaking collaboration between the publishers Random House
and BirdLife International
, to survey and document worldwide, the cultural significance of birds. The Birds and People project involves an open internet forum
, for individuals worldwide to document their reflections, experiences and stories about bird.. The final book is intended as a global chorus on the relationship between human beings and birds.
The resulting book is intended as a summary of the current state of birdlife worldwide. Cocker suggests that birds are the miner's canary for the natural world. However a further aim of the Birds and People project is to provide a panoramic survey of the multitudinous way in which birds enter and enrich human lives. This underscores the author’s preoccupation with a less obvious aspect of biologicalimpoverishment. Loss of biodiversity
is invariably considered only in terms of its ecological and environmental consequences. Birds and People is intended to highlight how a decline in species inflicts parallel losses upon the very fabric of human cultures.
was shortlisted for the Angel Award (1989). Birds Britannica, a project initiated by Richard Mabey and written by Mark Cocker, was British Birds/BTO Bird Book of the Year (2005) and described by Andrew Motion
, the poet laureate
as:
Crow Country was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson
prize for Non-Fiction (2008).
Cocker is a co-founder of the Oriental Bird Club
, a founding council member of the African Bird Club
, a former council member of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists Society and NNNS President (2007–2008).
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
author and naturalist
Naturalist
Naturalist may refer to:* Practitioner of natural history* Conservationist* Advocate of naturalism * Naturalist , autobiography-See also:* The American Naturalist, periodical* Naturalism...
. He lives and works deep in the Norfolk
Norfolk
Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...
countryside with his wife Mary Muir and two daughters in claxton. All of his eight books have dealt with modern responses to the wild, whether found in landscape, human societies or in other species.
Cocker has written extensively for British newspapers and magazines including The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
, The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
and BBC Wildlife
BBC Wildlife
BBC Wildlife is a British glossy, all-colour, monthly magazine about wildlife, founded by BBC Worldwide and published through the BBC Magazines Bristol division, also trading as Bristol Magazines Ltd....
. He has written a regular 'Country Diary
Country Diary
Country Diary is a daily natural history column in the English newspaper The Guardian, first published in November 1906. It is also now freely available on the newspaper's website. Past and present contributors include Pete Bowler, Arnold Boyd, Mark Cocker, Thomas Coward, Harry Griffin, Jim Perrin...
' column in the Guardian since 1988 and a wildlife column in the international subscribers' edition, the Guardian Weekly from 1996-2002. He reviews regularly for the Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement.
Background and education
Mark Cocker was brought up and educated in BuxtonBuxton
Buxton is a spa town in Derbyshire, England. It has the highest elevation of any market town in England. Located close to the county boundary with Cheshire to the west and Staffordshire to the south, Buxton is described as "the gateway to the Peak District National Park"...
Derbyshire
Derbyshire
Derbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The northern part of Derbyshire overlaps with the Pennines, a famous chain of hills and mountains. The county contains within its boundary of approx...
, the gateway to the Peak District National Park. This early access to the spectacular limestone
Limestone
Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....
flora
Flora
Flora is the plant life occurring in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring or indigenous—native plant life. The corresponding term for animals is fauna.-Etymology:...
of the Derbyshire Dales
Derbyshire Dales
Derbyshire Dales is a local government district in Derbyshire, England. Much of the district is situated in the Peak District, although most of its population lies along the River Derwent....
and the specialised upland birds of the Dark Peak
Dark Peak
The Dark Peak is the higher, wilder northern part of the Peak District in England.It gets its name because , the underlying limestone is covered by a cap of Millstone Grit which means that in winter the soil is almost always saturated with water...
, provided formative experiences in his evolution as a naturalist.
He studied English Literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
at the University of East Anglia
University of East Anglia
The University of East Anglia is a public research university based in Norwich, United Kingdom. It was established in 1963, and is a founder-member of the 1994 Group of research-intensive universities.-History:...
(1978–1982), where he became immersed in East Anglia’s nationally important wildlife landscapes, including the North Norfolk
Norfolk
Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...
coast, Breckland
Breckland
The Breckland as a landscape region is an unusual natural habitat of England. It comprises the gorse-covered sandy heath that exists in the north of the county of Suffolk and the south of Norfolk. An area of considerable interest for its unusual flora and fauna, it lies to the south east of another...
and the Broads
The Broads
The Broads are a network of mostly navigable rivers and lakes in the English counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. The Broads, and some surrounding land were constituted as a special area with a level of protection similar to a UK National Park by The Norfolk and Suffolk Broads Act of 1988...
. These became the inspiration for the vast majority of 900+ articles on wildlife, published in national and regional newspapers.
An active environmentalist
Environmentalist
An environmentalist broadly supports the goals of the environmental movement, "a political and ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment through changes to environmentally harmful human activities"...
, Cocker worked for the RSPB (1985), English Nature
English Nature
English Nature was the United Kingdom government agency that promoted the conservation of wildlife, geology and wild places throughout England between 1990 and 2006...
(now Natural England
Natural England
Natural England is the non-departmental public body of the UK government responsible for ensuring that England's natural environment, including its land, flora and fauna, freshwater and marine environments, geology and soils, are protected and improved...
1985-6) and BirdLife International
BirdLife International
BirdLife International is a global Partnership of conservation organisations that strives to conserve birds, their habitats and global biodiversity, working with people towards sustainability in the use of natural resources...
(1988-9). In 1998 he received a Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship to explore the cultural importance of birds in West Africa
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
(Benin
Benin
Benin , officially the Republic of Benin, is a country in West Africa. It borders Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east and Burkina Faso and Niger to the north. Its small southern coastline on the Bight of Benin is where a majority of the population is located...
and Cameroon
Cameroon
Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon , is a country in west Central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west; Chad to the northeast; the Central African Republic to the east; and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Cameroon's coastline lies on the...
).
Biographical Excursions
Cocker has travelled to over 40 countries spanning 5 continents in pursuit of wildlife. Between 1982 and 1984 he spent a total of 10 months in IndiaIndia
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
. This proved to be the background to two illuminating biographical studies: A Himalayan Ornithologist: The Life and Work of Brian Houghton Hodgson
Brian Houghton Hodgson
Brian Houghton Hodgson was an early naturalist and ethnologist working in British India and Nepal where he was an English civil servant. He described many species, especially birds and mammals from the Himalayas, and several birds were named after him by others such as Edward Blyth...
and Richard Meinertzhagen
Richard Meinertzhagen
Colonel Richard Henry Meinertzhagen CBE DSO was a British soldier, intelligence officer and ornithologist.- Background and youth :Meinertzhagen was born into a socially connected, wealthy British family...
: Soldier Scientist and Spy. These examined two remarkable figures from the age of Empire
Empire
The term empire derives from the Latin imperium . Politically, an empire is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples united and ruled either by a monarch or an oligarchy....
, radically different in personality, but united by the polymathic range of their interests.
Hodgson was the Honourable East India Company’s resident (proto Ambassador
Ambassador
An ambassador is the highest ranking diplomat who represents a nation and is usually accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization....
) in Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
, where he was a scholar of almost every branch of zoology
Zoology
Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...
, from fish and amphibians, to birds and mammals. He was also a scholar of Himalayan
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
languages and of Mahayana Buddhism. Six weeks spent in a Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
an Buddhist monastery led to Cocker's involvement in this book.
Meinertzhagen, on the other hand, was a big-game hunter, a soldier, naturalist, minor political figure, writer, intelligence officer, explorer and diarist. Cocker's biography on this neglected demon and giant, received widespread critical acclaim and was judged, with Mark Hudson
Mark Hudson (author)
Mark Hudson is a multiple-award-winning British writer, journalist and critic, whose books have been described as exploring the boundaries between fiction and travel writing.-Biography:...
‘s Our Grandmothers‘ Drums and Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson
William McGuire "Bill" Bryson, OBE, is a best-selling American author of humorous books on travel, as well as books on the English language and on science. Born an American, he was a resident of Britain for most of his adult life before moving back to the US in 1995...
‘s The Lost Continent, one of the highlights for Secker and Warburg
Secker and Warburg
Harvill Secker is a British publishing company formed in 2004 from the merger of Secker and Warburg and the Harvill Press.Secker and Warburg was formed in 1936 from a takeover of Martin Secker, which was in receivership, by Fredric Warburg and Roger Senhouse...
in 1989. The novelist William Boyd (writer)
William Boyd (writer)
William Boyd, CBE is a Scottish novelist and screenwriter.-Biography:Of Scottish descent, Boyd spent his early life in Ghana and Nigeria, in Africa...
, who had drawn on some of Meinertzhagen’s writings in his novel An Ice-Cream War
An Ice-Cream War
An Ice-Cream War is a darkly comic war novel by Scottish author William Boyd, which was nominated for a Booker Prize in the year of its publication.- Synopsis :...
, said of Cocker's biographical study of Meinertzhagen:
’Mark Cocker lucidly and honestly tries to pin the man down and succeeds admirably insofar as such an attempt is possible. The problem with Meinertzhagen, … is that the chief witness and key source is the man himself. Cocker has unearthed in his diaries patent elaborations, exaggerations and falsehoods and there is evidence too that in his scientific career Meinertzhagen indulged in practices that would be considered highly fraudulent. … But with that reservation it is a compelling story and Meinertzhagen, however bizarre or preposterous or sinister or admirable we may think him, is one of the genuinely fascinating mavericks in 20th-century history’.
Cocker's next two books reflected his darkening perception of Britain’s wider imperial
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
impact upon the lands and peoples that they explored and occupied.
Conquest and Power
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
figures, to a moral reflection upon the real impact of European Empire, this resulted in his next two books: Loneliness and Time: British Travel Writing in the Twentieth Century and Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold: Europe’s Conflict with Tribal People.
Loneliness and Time is an attempt to provide both a generic understanding of the importance of travel and foreign lands to the British psyche
Psyche (psychology)
The word psyche has a long history of use in psychology and philosophy, dating back to ancient times, and has been one of the fundamental concepts for understanding human nature from a scientific point of view. The English word soul is sometimes used synonymously, especially in older...
, and an investigation of the intellectual value and literary canons of the travel book. It received mixed reviews.
Loneliness and Time was followed by the exhaustively researched and highly acclaimed indictment of European exploitation and destruction of indiginenous people, Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold, which Cocker considered his most important book. The work focuses on four collisions between Europeans and indigenous cultures: the conquest of Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, the British onslaught on the Tasmanian Aborigines
Tasmanian Aborigines
The Tasmanian Aborigines were the indigenous people of the island state of Tasmania, Australia. Before British colonisation in 1803, there were an estimated 3,000–15,000 Parlevar. A number of historians point to introduced disease as the major cause of the destruction of the full-blooded...
, the uprooting of the Apaches, and the German campaign against the tribes of Southwest Africa.
The book was praised and criticised on both sides of the Atlantic for similar reasons. Among its critics, Ronald Wright
Ronald Wright
Ronald Wright is a Canadian author who has written books of travel, history and fiction. His nonfiction includes the bestseller Stolen Continents, winner of the Gordon Montador Award and chosen as a book of the year by the Independent and the Sunday Times...
, noted its "shaky existential dichotomy between Europeans and “tribal peoples”", while fellow historian Alfred Crosby
Alfred Crosby
Alfred W. Crosby is a historian, professor and author of such books as The Columbian Exchange and Ecological Imperialism...
suggested that "Cocker has written the kind of book we needed a generation ago, when our concept of history was profoundly Eurocentric, but surely now all of us given to reading history books are doubtful about the immaculate gloriousness of white civilization".
However, as already said, it also received praise. Charles Nicholl
Charles Nicholl
Charles "Boomer" Bowen Nicholl was a Welsh international rugby union forward who played club rugby for Cambridge University and Llanelli...
wrote that "Cocker succeeds in finding a tone appropriate to the matter: he has a journalistic sense of impact and a powerful command of historical narrative. This is a powerful book, communicating its fierce indignation without recourse to polemic.", while Ronald Wright
Ronald Wright
Ronald Wright is a Canadian author who has written books of travel, history and fiction. His nonfiction includes the bestseller Stolen Continents, winner of the Gordon Montador Award and chosen as a book of the year by the Independent and the Sunday Times...
stated "The most powerful theme of Mark Cocker’s books is … his vivid map of hell into which people can so easily descend when they have ideology, means and opportunity."
The Poetry of Fact
All of Cocker‘s subsequent work has focused on aspects of natural historyNatural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
. The best known is the epic Birds Britannica, a work of nature study, rich with literary, historical and cultural references. It was based on Flora Britannica by the acclaimed nature writer Richard Mabey
Richard Mabey
Richard Mabey is a naturalist and author.He has been called by The Times 'Britain's greatest living nature writer'. Among his acclaimed publications are Food for Free, The Unofficial Countryside and The Common Ground, as well as his study of the nightingale, Whistling in the Dark...
, who initiated its sister volume. However Mabey’s ill health meant that it was written entirely by Cocker. As Philip Marsden
Philip Marsden
Philip Marsden also known as Philip Marsden-Smedley is an English travel writer and novelist.Marsden has a degree in anthropology and worked for some years for The Spectator magazine. He became a full-time writer in the late 1980s...
puts it:
"In the past, birds animated long journeys to market, days of trudge at trawl or plough. Their habits bred anthropomorphisms, superstitions and nicknames. These in themselves provide an extraordinary glimpse into the imaginative range of our own species. Now that we drive everywhere, now that fishermen and farmers are growing as scarce as marsh warblers, we see birds differently. Birds Britannica shows that this need not be seen as something artificial or contrived but as part of a long and ever-shifting relationship, an indicator of our own place in nature."
Cocker's work on the ubiquitous crow
Crow
Crows form the genus Corvus in the family Corvidae. Ranging in size from the relatively small pigeon-size jackdaws to the Common Raven of the Holarctic region and Thick-billed Raven of the highlands of Ethiopia, the 40 or so members of this genus occur on all temperate continents and several...
is in similar spirit: a rare combination of natural history
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
and Cultural anthropology
Cultural anthropology
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans, collecting data about the impact of global economic and political processes on local cultural realities. Anthropologists use a variety of methods, including participant observation,...
. Crow Country is Cocker’s most successful book to date, receiving widespread critical acclaim. More than simply a long term study of a 'common bird', Crow Country represents a fusion of acute natural historical observations with fine writing, which Cocker defines as the poetry of fact. Of Crow Country, Cocker said:
"I would say there's a large body of writing on nature that is inaccurate, that sentimentalises nature, interpreting nature in a way that suits the writer...The facts are subjugated by the writer's feelings. But my writing is in the poetry of fact. This is not a shallow piece of study. I have found almost every paper on the subject in the English language."
The importance of being 'true' to the nature of the subject is apparent, but so too is his desire to discover the wealth of cultural significance attached to it. Like the natural detective's search for the perpetrator, Cocker's investigations are laden with significance. Reminiscent of an earlier age of scientific investigation, the 'whole picture' perspective being not unlike that of Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
who wrote in a similar vein:
"Men have sought to make a world from their own conception and to draw from their own minds all the material which they employed, but if, instead of doing so, they had consulted experience and observation, they would have the facts and not opinions to reason about, and might have ultimately arrived at the knowledge of the laws which govern the natural world."
This unique combination of natural scientist, environmentalist and cultural anthropologist is most evident in his latest project Birds and People.
Birds and People
Cocker's latest project with foremost British wildlife photographer David TiplingDavid Tipling
David Tipling is a professional wildlife photographer with an international reputation. His highly distinctive images have earned him many awards and accolades...
and Natural history
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
author Jonathan Elphick
Jonathan Elphick
Jonathan Elphick is a natural history author, editor and consultant. He is an eminent ornithologist, a qualified zoologist; Fellow of the Zoological Society of London and a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London...
, is http://www.birdsandpeople.org/
Birds and People
Birds and People is a ten-year long, groundbreaking collaboration between the publishers Random House and BirdLife International, to survey and document worldwide, the cultural significance of birds.. The Birds and People project involves an open internet forum, for individuals worldwide to...
]. Birds and People
Birds and People
Birds and People is a ten-year long, groundbreaking collaboration between the publishers Random House and BirdLife International, to survey and document worldwide, the cultural significance of birds.. The Birds and People project involves an open internet forum, for individuals worldwide to...
is a ten-year long, groundbreaking collaboration between the publishers Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
and BirdLife International
BirdLife International
BirdLife International is a global Partnership of conservation organisations that strives to conserve birds, their habitats and global biodiversity, working with people towards sustainability in the use of natural resources...
, to survey and document worldwide, the cultural significance of birds. The Birds and People project involves an open internet forum
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
, for individuals worldwide to document their reflections, experiences and stories about bird.. The final book is intended as a global chorus on the relationship between human beings and birds.
"The sense of freedom evoked by birds in flight has been a source of inspiration alike to tribal communities and the world’s major civilisations. Writers, poets, artists and composers have drawn on the qualities of birds for thousands of years. Today birds often play the role of ambassador in our entire relationship with nature. For environmentalistEnvironmentalistAn environmentalist broadly supports the goals of the environmental movement, "a political and ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment through changes to environmentally harmful human activities"...
s they are collectively the miner’s canary, their populations helping us to gauge the health of natural environments from the inner-city to the remote Arctic tundra. Yet our connections with birds far exceed any simple utilitarian value. Very often at a domestic level they are cherished for their own sake, as simple companions, as aesthetic adornments and as expression of some unspoken bond between ourselves and the rest of nature.
The resulting book is intended as a summary of the current state of birdlife worldwide. Cocker suggests that birds are the miner's canary for the natural world. However a further aim of the Birds and People project is to provide a panoramic survey of the multitudinous way in which birds enter and enrich human lives. This underscores the author’s preoccupation with a less obvious aspect of biologicalimpoverishment. Loss of biodiversity
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...
is invariably considered only in terms of its ecological and environmental consequences. Birds and People is intended to highlight how a decline in species inflicts parallel losses upon the very fabric of human cultures.
Additional information
Cocker's book Richard MeinertzhagenRichard Meinertzhagen
Colonel Richard Henry Meinertzhagen CBE DSO was a British soldier, intelligence officer and ornithologist.- Background and youth :Meinertzhagen was born into a socially connected, wealthy British family...
was shortlisted for the Angel Award (1989). Birds Britannica, a project initiated by Richard Mabey and written by Mark Cocker, was British Birds/BTO Bird Book of the Year (2005) and described by Andrew Motion
Andrew Motion
Sir Andrew Motion, FRSL is an English poet, novelist and biographer, who presided as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009.- Life and career :...
, the poet laureate
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...
as:
'The great delight of my year, the book that made me feel I'd been waiting for it all my life, is the magnficently produced and completely enthralling Birds Britannica.'
Crow Country was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
prize for Non-Fiction (2008).
Cocker is a co-founder of the Oriental Bird Club
Oriental Bird Club
The Oriental Bird Club is a British-based club which exists to advance ornithology in the Oriental zoogeographical region. Its aims are to encourage an interest in wild birds of the Oriental region and their conservation, promote the work of regional bird and nature societies, and to collate and...
, a founding council member of the African Bird Club
African Bird Club
The African Bird Club is a United Kingdom registered ornithological charity established in 1992. Its area of interest covers continental Africa, Indian Ocean islands west of 80° East, , and Atlantic Ocean islands on or east of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge The African Bird Club (ABC) is a United Kingdom...
, a former council member of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists Society and NNNS President (2007–2008).
Books
- A Himalayan Ornithologist: The Life and Work of Brian Houghton Hodgson Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988. (with Carol Inskipp)
- Richard Meinertzhagen Soldier, Scientist and Spy, Secker and Warburg, London, 1989; Mandarin (paperback), London, 1990.
- Loneliness and Time British Travel Writing in the Twentieth Century, Secker and Warburg, London, 1992; published as Loneliness and Time The Story of British Travel Writing, Pantheon, New York, 1993; Secker and Warburg (paperback), London, 1994.
- Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold: Europe’s Conflict with Tribal People, Jonathan Cape, London, 1998; Pimlico, (paperback), London 1999; Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold, Europe’s Conquest of Indigenous Peoples, Grove Atlantic, 2000; (paperback) 2001.
- Birders: Tales of a Tribe, Jonathan Cape, London, 2001; Grove Atlantic, New York, 2002; Vintage (Paperback) 2002; Grove Atlantic, (paperback) 2003; Ellerstroms (Sweden) 2006;
- Birds BritannicaBirds BritannicaBirds Britannica is book by Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey, about the birds of the United Kingdom, and a sister volume to Mabey's 1996 Flora Britannica, about British plants...
(with Richard MabeyRichard MabeyRichard Mabey is a naturalist and author.He has been called by The Times 'Britain's greatest living nature writer'. Among his acclaimed publications are Food for Free, The Unofficial Countryside and The Common Ground, as well as his study of the nightingale, Whistling in the Dark...
), Chatto and Windus 2005. - A Tiger in the Sand, Jonathan Cape, 2006.
- Crow Country, Jonathan Cape, 2007; Thorpe large print 2008; Vintage August 2008
Articles
- ‘Houseboat Holiday in the Venice of the Orient’, The Scotsman, 9/3/85 (with Mary Muir).
- ‘Hair shirt approach to the land of Ladakh’, The Scotsman, 3/8/85 (with Mary Muir).
- ‘Under The Influence of Kathmandu’, The Scotsman, 4/1/86.
- ‘Protecting Parrots’, Birds RSPB magazine, Summer 1986.
- ‘Passage from India’, Cheshire Life, Spring 1989.
- ‘The Fall of Europe’s Birds’, The Guardian, July 1989.
- ‘The Parrots: Extensive Grounds for Complaint’, World Magazine, January 1990.
- ‘SOS Bali Starling Campaign’, World Magazine, June 1990.
- ‘Richard Meinertzhagen of Mottisfont’, Hampshire County Magazine, February 1991.
- ‘Once a Hero, Now a Villain?’ The Daily Telegraph, 28/5/94.
- Flights of Passage, The Guardian 16 September 1995.
- ‘Wensum Valley’, Suffolk -Norfolk Life, December 1995.
- CPRE Working with the English Farmer, Suffolk-Norfolk Life, October 1996.
- ‘Hieroglyphs’, Suffolk-Norfolk Life, September 1997.
- ‘A Lighter Shade of Bird’, Birdwatching, January 1998.
- ‘Black Magic: Crows and Folklore’, Birdwatching, March 1998.
- ‘Africa and the African Bird Club’, Alula, Vol 4/1, 1998
- ‘Whalesong’, Natural World, Spring 1998.
- ‘The Last Tasmanian’, Independent on Sunday, 26 April 1998.
- 'The Heart of Darkness’, Birdwatching, June 1998.
- ‘Sands of Time’, Birdwatching, July 1998.
- ‘Dive, Dive Dive’, Birdwatching, September 1998.
- African Safaris, Birdwatching, November 1998.
- Paradise Lost, Natural World, Autumn 1998.
- ‘Sticks and Stones’, Birdwatching, April 1999.
- ‘Norfolk at Close Quarters’, Birdwatching, August 1999
- ‘Roll on, Rutland’, Birdwatching, August 1999
- Where are the songbirds? Norfolk, EDP, November 1999.
- Back to Life, Natural World, Winter 1999.
- He Shoots, He Saves, Birdwatching, January 2000.
- Fish out of Water? Not sculptor Mike, EDP, 24 May 2000.
- Out of North Africa, Birdwatching, September 2000.
- Confessions of a Twitcher, The Times, 28 July 2001.
- A Breed Apart, Birdwatching, August 2001.
- Did you feel the ship move just now?, The Times, 1 October 2001.
- Ruffled Feathers, The Guardian, 28 November 2001.
- Holkham walk The Times 26/12/01.
- ‘Future Challenges in Africa’, Birding ABA, June 2002.
- ‘My hunt for Scotland’s little tiger’, The Times, 27/7/02.
- ‘Ospreys in the UK’, Birds RSPB, Winter 2002.
- ‘My goblin on acid’ The Times, 2/11/02.
- Blakeney Walk The Times 26/12/02
- Cra Wid’s Army of the Night, The Times, 29/03/03.
- RSPB Birds Spring, Summer Autumn, Winter, profiles of Lapwing, House Sparrow, Skylark, Red Kite, 2003.
- Shake your tail feather, The Times 24 May 2003
- Ravens The Times 9/1/04
- Cranes, The Times 14/2/04
- Raptor persecution, The Times, 28/2/04
- Dirty Dozen, (Egg collecting) The Times, 5/6/04
- The Insect: man’s best friend, (Invertebrates) The Times, 31/07/04
- No need to flap The Times, (swan upping) 31/07/04
- Oak takes Wing, The Times, 7/08/04.
- The fall of the wild, The Times, 21/08/04
- Does this bird fit the bill? (Slender billed Curlew) The Times, 9/10/04
- To whit Where, The Times 30/10/04
- Return of the Waterlands The Times 27/11/04
- Leading the Field, The Guardian, 6/04/05
- James McCallum, Birds Illustrated, May 2005.
- Birds Britannica BBC Wildlife August 2005
- RSPB Birds Spring, autumn profiles of Woodpeckers, Albatross 2005.
- Rum Manx Shearwaters, Guardian, 20/07/05.
- Saga Magazine, January 2006.
- It’s a Real Jungle Out There, EDP, April 2006
- The nest generation. Guardian Nov 06
- See Wildlife go Wild Times Travel, March 2007.
- The Dawn of the Cranes, BBC Wildlife Sept 2007 Greek magazine 1/08
- Atoning the Crows, Guardian, 05/09/07
- Caw blimey, Daily Mail 10/11/07
- The Labour Exchange, The Independent Magazine 10/11/07.
- The Daily Telegraph magazine ‘Nesting Instincts‘, 12/4/08
Radio and Television
- Anglia TV, ‘About Anglia’ (environmental feature 5 mins x 2) March 1999.
- BBC Radio Four ‘Nature’ Badger - TB, interview, 4/10/99.
- BBC Radio Four ‘A Lesser Spotted Lovesong’ (60 minutes, ‘From the Archive’), narrator 27/11/99.
- BBC Radio Four ‘The Ancient Ark’ interview 8/8/00
- BBC Radio Four , ‘Soldier, Scientist, Spy ... and Fraud’. (30 minutes), writer/narrator, 26/12/2000.
- BBC Radio Four ‘Off the Page’, (45 minutes), 4/3/2001.
- BBC Radio Four, ‘Blithe Spirits’, 2001.
- BBC Radio Four, ‘Race Myths’, 2001.
- BBC Radio Four, Midsummer Midweek, 22/8/2001.
- BBC Radio Three New Nature Writing 25/07/03. repeated
- BBC Radio Four Word of Mouth May 2005
- BBC Radio Three, Manxies on Rum as part of The Sea The Sea, 6/7/05.
- BBC Radio Four Openbook 15/9/05
- BBC Radio Four The Rook and Me 21-24/11/05 (60 minutes: 4 x 15); repeated September 2006.
- BBC Radio Four, Nature Skylark 05/2006
- BBC Radio Four, Book programme November 2006
- BBC Radio Four, Nature, Red Kite 01/2007
- BBC Radio Four, Nature, Country Diary 02/07.
- BBC Radio Four, Shared Earth, March 7
- BBC Radio Three, New Nature Writing, The Magic of Cranes, April 7
- BBC Radio Four, Nature, British Birds Centenary, May 7
- BBC Radio Four, Shared Earth, 8 June 7
- BBC Radio Four, Last Word Sept 07
- BBC2 Nature’s Calendar
- BBC Radio Three, Rites of Spring, March 8
External links
- Birds and People
- Owls in Lore and Culture (paper)
- Country Diary columns by Cocker (found via GoogleGoogleGoogle Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
) - Book reviews by Cocker from The Guardian.