<iframe src="//www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-K3L4M3" height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden">

Books

Why the cheating cuckoo may finally be getting its comeuppance

The ornithologist Mark Cocker is full of admiration for Nick Davies’s Cuckoo — as gripping as any detective story

21 March 2015

9:00 AM

21 March 2015

9:00 AM

Cuckoo: Cheating by Nature Nick Davies

Bloomsbury, pp.320, £16.99, ISBN: 9781408856567

In recent years there has been a fashion for so-called ‘new nature writing’, where the works are invariably heavy with emotion, while the descriptions of place and wildlife often serve as a hazy green backcloth against which the author depicts the main subject —their own personalities.

It comes as something of a shock, therefore, to find a new nature book that returns to a traditional format.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Easter flash sale:
10 issues for $1

Subscribe this Easter and get the next 10 issues of the magazine, plus website and app access, all for just $1.

  • Weekly delivery of the magazine
  • Unlimited access to spectator.com.au and app
  • Spectator Australia podcasts and newsletters
  • Full access to spectator.co.uk
Or

Unlock 3 articles a month

REGISTER

Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £13.99 Tel: 08430 600033. Mark Cocker is a naturalist and author of Crow Country, Birds and People and Birds Britannica (with Richard Mabey).

You might disagree with half of it, but you’ll enjoy reading all of it. Try your first month for free, then just $2 a week for the remainder of your first year.


Comments

Easter flash sale: 10 issues for $1

Join the conversation with other Spectator Australia readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Close