Mark Cocker: The Nature of Seeing – The Town Hall, Aylsham

On Tuesday 6th October at Aylsham Town Hall, Mark Cocker – celebrated naturalist and author – will discuss the joys of bearing witness to the many layered glory of the natural world.

This esteemed author discusses his latest book: The Nature of Seeing: Finding Wonder in the Living World. Described by Ben Rawlence as “a treasure trove”, Cocker’s prose reveals the pearls of wisdom to be found in slowing down and paying close attention to the natural world with which we are so entwined.

But what does it mean to truly see the natural world? Whether it is the sight of moonlight across a bedroom floor, or an owl as it hunts, or waxcap fungi that erupt across the fields overnight, Mark Cocker encourages us to reclaim our innate gift for wonder and to see the living world in all its infinite detail and mystery.

Through a series of diary entries describing his encounters with the natural world, he interrogates how we see and how it affects us at the most profound levels. In precise and lyrical prose, he shows us that seeing is a creative act that can both transform us and change the world we share. Revelatory and profound, The Nature of Seeing is the culmination of a lifetime’s love affair with the simple act of looking and all that it reveals.

Mark will be in conversation with Henry Layte, owner of The Book Hive.

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.

Mark Cocker: The Nature of Seeing
Tuesday 6th October
The Town Hall, Aylsham
Doors 6:30pm for a 7:00pm start
£5