Mark Cocker

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For the British wrestler, see Mark Cocker (wrestler).

Mark Cocker
Cocker in 2008
Born1959
NationalityBritish
Alma materUniversity of East Anglia
SpouseMary Muir
Children2
AwardsCrow Country was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize for Non-Fiction (2008)
Scientific career
FieldsNaturalist
Author

Mark Cocker (born 1959) is a British author and

naturalist. He lives with his wife, Mary Muir, and two daughters in Claxton, Norfolk
. The countryside around Claxton is a theme for two of his twelve books.

Cocker has written extensively for British newspapers and magazines including

Times Literary Supplement
.

Background and education

Cocker was brought up and educated in

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 was educated at

English Literature at the University of East Anglia (1978–82), 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 1985–86) and BirdLife International (1988–89). In 1998 he received a Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship to explore the cultural importance of birds in West Africa (Benin and Cameroon
).

Themes and interests

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 India and Nepal. This proved to be the background to two biographical studies: A Himalayan Ornithologist: The Life and Work of Brian Houghton Hodgson[1] and Richard Meinertzhagen: Soldier Scientist and Spy.[2] 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

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 of Meinertzhagen received widespread critical acclaim and was judged, with

Secker and Warburg in 1989.[3] The novelist William Boyd, who had drawn on some of Meinertzhagen's writings in his novel An Ice-Cream War
, 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."[4]

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.

Conquest and power

Tasmanian Aborigines c.1860s. Truganini
, the last to survive, is seated at far right

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[5] and Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold: Europe’s Conflict with Tribal People.[6]

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 an indictment of European exploitation and destruction of

Eurocentric
, but surely now all of us given to reading history books are doubtful about the immaculate gloriousness of white civilization".

By contrast, 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.",[9] 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."[10]

"The poetry of fact"

All of Cocker's subsequent work has focused on aspects of

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:[12]

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 is in similar spirit: a rare combination of natural history and cultural anthropology. Crow Country[13] is Cocker's most successful book to date, receiving widespread critical acclaim. Of Crow Country, Cocker said:[14]

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 who wrote in a similar vein:[15]

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 Tipling and natural history author Jonathan Elphick, is Birds and People.[16] Birds and People is a ten-year-long collaboration between the publishers Random House and BirdLife International to survey and document the worldwide 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 birds. 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

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.

— [16]

The resulting book is intended as a summary of the current state of birdlife worldwide. Cocker suggests that birds are the

human cultures
.

Additional information

Cocker's book Richard Meinertzhagen 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:[17]

The great delight of my year, the book that made me feel I'd been waiting for it all my life, is the magnificently produced and completely enthralling Birds Britannica.

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 President (2007–08).

Our Place was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize (2019).[18]

Books

  • with Inskipp, Carol (1988). A Himalayan Ornithologist: The Life and Work of Brian Houghton Hodgson. Oxford University Press.
  • Richard Meinertzhagen Soldier, Scientist and Spy. Secker and Warburg. 1989.
  • Loneliness and Time; British Travel Writing in the Twentieth Century. Secker and Warburg. 1992.
  • Rivers of Blood, River's of Gold: Europe's Conflict with Tribal People. Jonathan Cape. 1998.
  • Birders: Tales of a Tribe. Jonathan Cape. 2001.
  • with
    Chatto and Windus
    .
  • A Tiger in the Sand: Selected Writings on Nature. Jonathan Cape. 2006.
    ISBN 978-0224078825
    .
  • Crow Country. Jonathan Cape. 2007.
  • Birds and People. 2013.
    ISBN 978-0224081740
    .
  • Claxton: Field Notes from a Small Planet Paperback. 2015.
    ISBN 978-0099593478
    .
  • Our Place: Can We Save Britain's Wildlife Before It Is Too Late?. 2018.
    ISBN 978-0224102292
    .
  • A Claxton Diary: Further Field Notes from a Small Planet. 2019.
    ISBN 978-1787331761
    .

References

  1. ^ A Himalayan Ornithologist: The Life and Work of Brian Houghton Hodgson, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988. Written with Carol Inskipp a leading scholar of Nepalese ornithology.
  2. Secker and Warburg
    , London, 1989; Mandarin (paperback), London, 1990
  3. ^ Secker and Warburg Spring Catalogue 1990.
  4. ^ Sunday Telegraph, 25 June 1989
  5. ^ 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
  6. Pimlico
    , (paperback), London 1999; Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold, Europe's Conquest of Indigenous Peoples, Grove Atlantic, 2000; (paperback) 2001
  7. Times Literary Supplement
    17 July 1998
  8. ^ Alfred Crosby, Los Angeles Times 3 August 2000
  9. ^ Charles Nicholl, Sunday Times 26 April 1998
  10. ^ Wright, Ronald (17 July 1998). Times Literary Supplement. {{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  11. ^ Birds Britannica, Cocker.M, pub. Chatto & Windus (2005)
  12. ^ Philip Marsden, The Sunday Times (21 August 2005)
  13. ^ Crow Country, Cocker. M, published by Jonathan Cape (2007)
  14. ^ Stone the Crows: In praise of a neglected high flyer, Ed Caesar, published in the Independent,6 August 2007
  15. ^ See the internal link to Francis Bacon
  16. ^ a b Birds and People website
  17. ^ The Guardian 2005
  18. ^ "2019 shortlist | The Wainwright Prize Golden Beer Prize". Retrieved 15 August 2019.

External links

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