One Midsummer's Day :Swifts and the Story of Life on Earth
One Midsummer's Day :Swifts and the Story of Life on Earth
paperback
Published:
13 June, 2024
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Description
From one of our greatest nature writers: how swifts act as a window into the unity of the living world.
Mark Cocker spends a single midsummer day tracing the flight of swifts - birds that connect continents, climates and species. What begins as a quiet act of observation expands into an awe-inspiring reflection on the interdependence of life on Earth.
Cocker moves from the skies above Britain to the deep ocean currents, solar energy and ecosystems that sustain all living things. This is nature writing of rare insight, beauty and vision – a hymn to the marvel of movement and connection that binds our planet together.
‘A jewel of a book’ Caroline Lucas
‘A beautiful, brilliant, mind-stretching and soul-flying book. Genius.’ Horatio Clare
More Details
| Type | Book |
|---|---|
| ISBN13 | 9781529921991 |
| ISBN10 | 1529921996 |
| Number Of Pages | 352 |
| Item Weight | 281 g |
| Product Dimensions | 130 x 197 x 22 mm |
| Publisher / Reseller | Vintage Publishing |
| Format | paperback |
Media Reviews
Lyrical and startling by turn, he reveals the extraordinary in the apparently ordinary... A jewel of a book -- Caroline Lucas MP
Not 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... He brings to this vast subject a scientist's rigour and a poet's expansive vision -- Philip Marsden * Spectator *
A beautiful, brilliant, mind-stretching and soul-flying book. Genius -- Horatio Clare, author of A Single Swallow
His grandest effort yet. Told as a series of reflections that fly through his mind in the course of a single day watching swifts from his garden in Norfolk, he ranges across topics as widely as a swift ranges across the sky... Magnificent * Financial Times *
Cocker is both a superb prose stylist, with a poet’s eye and ear, and a naturalist of wide erudition and imaginative reach… One Midsummer’s Day is a wonderful book – literally, a book of wonders. -- John Banville * Irish Times *
A rich and elegant exploration that takes us to unexpected places. With the swift as our lift, we leave the garden on an extraordinary tour that takes in the moon, amongst many other wonderful destinations -- Tristan Gooley, author of How to Read a Tree
Mark Cocker's ode to a remarkable species makes a powerful case for the value of awe in a time of ecological grief * New Statesman *
In his mission to restore a sense of wonder to life's small and ordinary things, Mark Cocker takes us on a soaring journey from the Cretaceous period to a summer's day in his English garden... Lyrical, grand and full of reverence * Guardian, *Book of the Day* *
Cocker brings both nostalgia and universal connections to the swifts' majestic, sky-high adventures * Mail on Sunday *
A stunning celebration – and commemoration – of swifts * New Statesman, *Books of the Year* *
GoodReads Reviews
Author's Bio
Mark Cocker is an author and naturalist whose fourteen books include works of biography, history, literary criticism and memoir. Crow Country was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2008 and won the New Angle Prize for Literature in 2009. A Claxton Diary won the East Anglian Book of the Year Award in 2019, and his most recent book, One Midsummer’s Day, was shortlisted for the Richard Jefferies Award 2023.