Yearly Archives: 2015

Conduct unbecoming Mark Cocker — Part 2

We have re-read Mark Cocker’s article in the New Statesman 17/06/2015, and there seems little doubt that he wrote it partly with the intention of slighting Robert Macfarlane: as to a possible motive, we touched on this in our previous post.

As well as the points we had already noted we saw that a photograph was captioned ‘Wild thing: Robert Macfarlane, the genre’s figurehead, has been criticised for being an excursionist.’ Is this really so? By whom, we wonder? What is certain is that as Mark Cocker had written somewhat pejoratively about the ‘New Nature Writers’ — in itself a phrase well over-used — yet it was to this ‘genre’ that he referred in his caption and to further state that Robert Macfarlane had been ‘criticised’ as an excursionist seemed disingenuous; even spiteful. Continue reading →

Conduct unbecoming Mark Cocker

According to John McEwen, writing in The Spectator on 11/10/2014:

Mark Cocker is the naturalist of the moment, with birds his special interest.

This accolade, with dozens more, is presumably the reason that his opinions on other nature-writers are thought of value, and we have just read his article Death of the Naturalist in New Statesman, 17/06/2015.

He was by no means as even-handed in his writing of it as was the editor Jason Cowley in his publishing of the piece. It may be remembered that it was Jason Cowley, then editor of Granta, who anthologized in Granta 102 (2008) what could be called the cream of ‘The New Nature Writing’, and we wonder how thoroughly he had read Mark Cocker’s article — considering its content. Continue reading →

Multiple Online Personality Disorder

Jim Perrin does lead a merry dance through the personal fiefdom (as he seems to regard it) that is the Internet, and we are most grateful that someone else can help us analyse his online activities more deeply than we are able to do. One of our perceptive well-wishers has an interest in the recently described condition M.O.P.D., and has made a brief study of it; and as a follower of our site he has not failed to pick up on our accusations that Jim Perrin has written under pseudonyms. He too has recognized the patterns which he considers point to this likelihood. Very kindly he has sent us this contribution.

He writes:

‘Let me prefix the following by saying that the lawyers insist on the term ‘I (or we) believe’ being coupled with every assertion regarding Jim Perrin for which hard proof is not provided. In the present matter such proof is not easy to come by — but it certainly exists and could be assembled with (and by some parties of my acquaintance without) the co-operation of certain website operators, internet service providers, and email services; but really, need I bother? Continue reading →