In 2001 the author and environmentalist Mark Cocker moved from Norwich to Claxton, a rural parish just outside the city. Living there has been a fundamental springboard for four of his last books, including Birds Britannica, Crow Country and Birds and People, and he has written about Claxton extensively in his 'Country Diaries' for the Guardian . In Claxton: Field Notes from a Small Planet, Cocker - in a single twelve-month cycle of daily writings - explores his relationship to the East Anglian landscape, to nature and to all the living this around him. The separate entries are characterised by close observation, depth of experience, and a profound awareness of seasonal change, both within in each distinct year and, more alarmingly, over the longer period, as a result of the changing climate. The writing is concise, magical, inspiring. Cocker describes all the wildlife in the village - not just birds, but plants, trees, mammals, hoverflies, moths, butterflies, bush crickets, grasshoppers, ants and bumblebees. The book explores how these other species are as essential to our sense of genuine well-being and to our feelings of rootedness as any other kind of fellowship. A celebration of the wonder that lies in our everyday experience, Cocker's book emphasises how Claxton is as much a state of mind as it is a place.

Above all else, it is a manifesto for the central importance of the local in all human activity.