MC - Mark Cocker Archive

MC

Collection

Mark Cocker Archive

1976-2020

44 boxes Mixed

British Archive for Contemporary Writing

Meinertzhagen, Richard 1878-1967

Birds
Natural history
Corvus
Bird watching

Cocker, MarkMark Cocker (1959- ) has written extensively for British newspapers and magazines. 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.

Cocker was brought up and educated in Buxton, Derbyshire. He attended Buxton College, and studied English Literature at the University of East Anglia (1978–82). He received an Honorary Doctorate from UEA in 2016.

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).

His books include works of biography, history, literary criticism and memoir. These include: 'Field Notes from a Small Planet' (2014) and 'Our Place' (2018). 'Birds and People' was published to international acclaim in 2013 and was a collaboration with the photographer David Tipling. 'Crow Country' (2008) was shortlisted for several awards, including the Samuel Johnson Prize, and won the New Angle Prize (2009).

The papers in boxes 1-5 were initially deposited by Cocker with the Norfolk Record Office (NRO) with accession no. 2008/430. Cocker transferred the papers to UEA Archives in September 2015 as a loan deposit.

An additional 5 boxes arrived Dec 2015 – March 2016.

A collection of 9 notebooks was deposited on 15/7/16. A further box was deposited 6/12/16.

The contents of box 14 were deposited in March 2017.

The contents of boxes 15-17 were deposited in a shopping bag in September 2017 and largely relate to the ornithologist Richard Meinertzhagen and MC’s biography Richard Meinertzhagen: Soldier, Scientist and Spy (1989).

The contents of boxes 19-20 were deposited in a shopping bag in February 2018 and relate to Loneliness and Time: British Travel Writing in the Twentieth Century (1992).

Additional deposits were made in 2019, 2020, 2021 & 2022.

THIS COLLECTION IS CURRENTLY BEING CATALOGUED (Dec 2024).

Typescripts, galley proofs and page proofs, notebooks, correspondence and reference papers, journalism, audio-cassettes, digital discs. Publications covered: A Himalayan Ornithologist (1988); Richard Meinertzhagen: Soldier, Scientist and Spy (1989); Loneliness and Time (1992); Birders (2001); Birds Britannica (2005); A Tiger in the Sand (2006); Crow Country (2008); Birds and People (2013); Claxton: field notes from a small planet (2014).

MC deposited research papers (the subject of a biography) on Richard Meinertzhagen at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. MC also deposited twenty years of correspondence with leading ornithologist Derek Goodwin (1920-2008) with The Alexander Library of Ornithology, Oxford. The Norfolk Record Office holds audio-visual material of MC interviewing over 30 key naturalists.