CLAXTON DIARY

For seventeen years, as part of his daily routine, the author and naturalist Mark Cocker has taken a two-mile walk down to the river from his cottage on the edge of the Norfolk Broads. The subjects of these short essays range from the yellow-barred longhorn micromoth to the ‘Beast from the East’, unwedded queen ants pouring out of pavement cracks to owls ghosting down the dykes at last light. A vision of an English country parish that for intimacy and precise detail is comparable with Gilbert White’s diary on Selbourne.