Lyrical and startling by turn, he reveals the extraordinary in the apparently ordinary... A jewel of a book -- Caroline Lucas MP Not just a glorious celebration of swifts but of their place amid the panoply of life on Earth... Cocker is one of our greatest living naturalists... He brings to this vast subject a scientist's rigour and a poet's expansive vision -- Philip Marsden * Spectator * A beautiful, brilliant, mind-stretching and soul-flying book. Genius -- Horatio Clare, author of A Single Swallow His grandest effort yet. Told as a series of reflections that fly through his mind in the course of a single day watching swifts from his garden in Norfolk, he ranges across topics as widely as a swift ranges across the sky... Magnificent * Financial Times * Cocker is both a superb prose stylist, with a poets eye and ear, and a naturalist of wide erudition and imaginative reach One Midsummers Day is a wonderful book literally, a book of wonders. -- John Banville * Irish Times * A rich and elegant exploration that takes us to unexpected places. With the swift as our lift, we leave the garden on an extraordinary tour that takes in the moon, amongst many other wonderful destinations -- Tristan Gooley, author of How to Read a Tree Mark Cocker's ode to a remarkable species makes a powerful case for the value of awe in a time of ecological grief * New Statesman * In his mission to restore a sense of wonder to life's small and ordinary things, Mark Cocker takes us on a soaring journey from the Cretaceous period to a summer's day in his English garden... Lyrical, grand and full of reverence * Guardian, *Book of the Day* * Cocker brings both nostalgia and universal connections to the swifts' majestic, sky-high adventures * Mail on Sunday * A stunning celebration and commemoration of swifts * New Statesman, *Books of the Year* *
