The Bridport Literary Festival 2018

Mark Cocker is one of our greatest and most distinguished nature writers as well as being an environmental activist and conservationist.

Our Place is a radical examination of Britain’s relationship with the land. Environmental thought and politics have become parts of mainstream cultural life in Britain, but where did ‘green’ ideas come from and who created the cherished institutions such as the National Trust and RSPB.

Cocker’s book looks at the future as well as exploring the past, examining special places that embody the history of conservation.He also attempts to solve a puzzle: why do the British seem to love their countryside more than any other nation, yet they live amid one of the most denatured landscapes on earth. He also maps out how our overcrowded island could be a place made  fit for human occupants as well as its billions of wild ‘citizens’.