Mark Cocker is a multi-award-winning author of creative non-fiction, a naturalist and a writing tutor. He writes or broadcasts on nature in a variety of national media. He reviews for the Spectator and other publications and has written a fortnighly country diary for The Guardian and Guardian Weekly without a break since 1988. He has now written well over 1,000 articles for both papers. His 14 books, covering works of biography, history, literary criticism and memoir, include Loneliness and Time (1992), Birders: Tales of a Tribe (2001), and Birds Britannica (2005). His environmental history Our Place (Cape, 2018) was shortlisted for the Thwaites Wainwright and the Richard Jefferies Prizes.

He received an honorary Doctorate of Literature from the University of East Anglia (2016), where he has placed his archive. He was awarded a Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship (1999) to study birds in magico-medicinal practices in Benin and Cameroon. He lives in Derbyshire next to the street where he was born and is married to the arts professional Mary Muir, from whom he gets many of his best ideas. He has co-founded several environmental organisations, including the Oriental Bird Club and New Networks for Nature, and was on the founding council of the African Bird Club.