John Alec Baker (6 August 1926 – 26 December 1987) was an English author, best known for The Peregrine, which won the Duff Cooper Prize in 1967. The Peregrine Robert Macfarlane deemed The Peregrine to be "a masterpiece of twentieth-century non-fiction" in his introduction to the New York Review Books edition of the book. On the back jacket cover of the same edition, James Dickey states that the book "transcends any 'nature writing' of our time," while Barry Lopez declares the book to be "one of the most beautifully written, carefully observed and evocative wildlife accounts I have ever read." Werner Herzog called it the "one book I would ask you to read if you want to make films," and said elsewhere "... it has prose of the caliber that we have not seen since Joseph Conrad." In January 2018, The Peregrine was included by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in a list of 10 contenders to find the UK's favourite book about nature. When the result was announced at the end of January on the BBC Winterwatch programme it did not make the top three. The poll was topped by Fingers in the Sparkle Jar by Chris Packham. The book recounts a single year from October to April (probably of 1962/3) from the author's ten-year obsession with the peregrines that wintered near his home in Chelmsford, Essex, in eastern England. The writing is lyrically charged throughout, as the author's role of diligent observer gives way to a personal transformation, as Baker becomes, in the words of James Dickey on the book's jacket cover, "a fusion of man and bird." Over the years, there has been much debate over the veracity of Baker's observations of the behaviour of peregrines. Conor Jameson has suggested in his book Silent Spring Revisited<ref>Silent Spring Revisited by Conor Mark Jameson, A & C Black 2012, </ref> (2012) and blog that their aberrant behaviour, as recorded by Baker, may have been as a result of the effect of chemical poisoning on their nervous system. The BBC published a recording of The Peregrine read by David Attenborough in December 2019. It was available for a year at the BBC Radio 4 website. Other works and legacy Baker's only other book is 1969's The Hill of Summer, a lyrical and somewhat visionary account of summer's progress across the wilder parts of southern England. Though not as famous