Pivotal joins Transition Cambridge in supporting this Cambridge Literary Festival Event.

In his latest book, naturalist and environmental activist Mark Cocker explores six special places which embody the history of British conservation. We meet key characters who shaped the story of the British countryside – Victorian visionaries like Octavia Hill, founder of the National Trust, as well as brilliant naturalists such as Max Nicholson and Derek Ratcliffe.

The book asks searching questions about who owns the land and why? And who benefits from green policies? Above all it attempts to solve a puzzle: why do the British seem to love their countryside more than almost any other nation, yet we have come to live amid one of the most denatured landscapes on Earth?

Mark will be in conversation with Tim Dee, BBC Radio producer, writer and editor of Ground Work

Mark Cocker's ten books include Crow Country (shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, winner of the New Angle Prize for Literature) and Birds and People (with photographer David Tipling), a massive survey described by the Times Literary Supplement as ‘a major literary event as well as an ornithological one’.

 Website and ticket info:

http://www.cambridgeliteraryfestival.com/whatson/mark-cocker/