Michael McCarthy is one of Britain's leading writers on the environment and the natural world. As a journalist, he was the Environment Correspondent of The Times, covering the early measures taken to combat climate change, culminating in the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro; later he was the long-standing Environment Editor of The Independent. He has won a string of awards for his work, including Environment Journalist of The Year in the British Environment and Media Awards (three times); Specialist Writer of The Year in the British Press Awards; the Silver Medal of the Zoological Society of London; the Dilys Breeze Medal of the British Trust for Ornithology; and the Medal of the RSPB for 'outstanding services to conservation.' As an author he has written Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo (2009), a study of Britain's summer migrant birds, which was widely praised; The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy (2015), which was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize and the Richard Jefferies Prize, and described by The New York Times as "an idiosyncratic and wonderful walk through his joy of nature"; and (with Jeremy Mynott and Peter Marren) The Consolation of Nature - Spring in The Time of Coronavirus (2020) which was chosen as one of The Guardian's Nature Books of The Year.
