The swimmer

Roger Deakin, author of the immortal ‘Waterlog’ and ‘Wildwood,’ was a man of unusually many parts. A born writer who nonetheless took decades to write his first book, Roger was also variously – and sometimes simultaneously – maverick ad-man, seller of stripped pine furniture on the Portobello Road, cider-maker, teacher, environmentalist, music promoter, and filmmaker. But above all he was the restorer of ancient Walnut Tree Farm in Suffolk, the heartland which he shared with a host of visitors, both animal and human, and wrote about – as he wrote about all natural life – with rare attention, intimacy, precision and poetry. Roger Deakin was unique, and so too is this joyful work of creative biography, told primarily in the words of the subject himself, with support from a chorus of friends, family, colleagues, lovers and neighbours.