The titanic influence of the bird on our society is almost too great to fathom. Their feathers keep us warm or adorn our costumes; their flight has inspired the human imagination so that birds are embedded in our religions, folklore, music and arts – even on our national emblems, flags, stamps, coins, banknotes.
Birds and People explores and celebrates this extraordinary relationship. Eight years in the making and vast in both scope and scale, the book draws upon Mark Cocker’s forty years of observing and thinking about birds. Part natural history and part cultural study, it describes and maps the entire spectrum of our engagements with birds, drawing in themes of history, literature, art, cuisine, language, lore, politics and the environment. In the end, this is a book as much about us as it is about birds. Stunningly illustrated by one of Europe’s best wildlife photographers, David Tipling, this is an incredibly beautiful and astounding book. This will be an evening of stunning anecdotes and discoveries, with one of our greatest living naturalists: come along, and have your view of the world we share with our feathered companions completely overturned.