Book description
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 themes over the last twenty years
- the magical dynamism of birds, as well as the subtle beauty, vast
skies and wildlife riches of the Norfolk landscape. In its celebration
of the natural world, the hugely varied selection also demonstrates a
concern to champion the despised and neglected - rats, gulls, crows
(the 'Black Beasts' of his first section) - as much as it explores
some of the most charismatic creatures on Earth - penguins, whales,
lions and elephants. Cocker is equally good at evoking the commonplace
mysteries of garden blackbirds and thrush's song, as he is the exotic
otherness of mountain gorillas or the one-horned rhinoceros.
With its attention to detail, especially the sharpness of perception
and the precise use of language, the writing in A Tiger in the Sand
shows qualities more usually associated with poetry than with prose.
Mark Cocker is one of Britain's foremost writers on nature and
contributes regularly to the
Guardian,
the
Times Literary Supplement,
as well as BBC Radio Four. His six other books deal with modern
responses to wilderness, whether found in landscape, human societies or
in other species. They include a biography,
Richard Meinerzthagen
, shortlisted for the Angel Prize and the hugely acclaimed bestseller
Birds Britannica
(with Richard Mabey). He recently won a Winston Churchill Travel
Fellowship to study the cultural importance of birds in West Africa.
