The Swimmer: The Wild Life of Roger Deakin

The definitive biography of Roger Deakin, beloved author of cult classic Waterlog Roger Deakin is best known for his modern classic of nature writing, Waterlog, which frog-kicked the wild swimming movement into existence with wit, politics and poetry. But he was not simply a dazzling writer and eccentric Englishman. He took his counterculture to the countryside in the 1970s and rebuilt a 16th century farmhouse from its oak beams up. He turned to self-sufficiency, teaching and environmentalism. He became a music impresario and made films, radio programmes and hundreds of friends from all classes - aristocrats, poachers, actors, builders, musicians, tearaways, from city and from town. He was a polymath, an enthusiast, an adventurer, a romantic and rebel. 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. Delving deep into Roger Deakin's library of words, Patrick Barkham draws from notebooks, diaries, letters, recordings, published work and early drafts, to conjure his voice back to glorious life in these pages. Patrick Barkham's biography follows Roger Deakin's tree of life, from roots to fruits, revealing the inner life of an extraordinary man.

About the Author :
Patrick Barkham is an award-winning author and natural history writer for the Guardian. His books include The Butterfly Isles, Badgerlands, Islander and Wild Child. He is President of Norfolk Wildlife Trust and lives in Norfolk with his family.

Review :
As much a biography of a generation as of an individual . . . Barkham conjures the life of the wild swimming champion and author of Waterlog in a bravura act of creative memoir . . . a rich, strange and compelling work of creative memoir that beautifully honours and elevates the life and work of its subject [A] remarkable book, an extraordinary insight . . . The Swimmer is an unconventional biography of an unconventional person . . . A tapestry-like life of the influential nature writer Barkham honours Deakin’s protean nature by collaging together often wildly contradictory testimonies from friends, colleagues and lovers. It manages, as few biographies do, to convey how impossible a person is to pin down, perhaps especially once as mercurial as Deakin Barkham's book succeeds in evoking a fascinating, creative, complicated man Reading Patrick Barkham's brilliant biography of this fascinating man, I felt both that I was meeting again the Roger Deakin I knew - and also encountering a Roger I never met . . . The narrative form Patrick has chosen allows Roger's own voice to sing through and with Patrick's - and also introduces us to a chorus of voices, memories and perspectives of those who knew Roger over the course of his wild and various life The Swimmer is biography at its most inventive, mixing Deakin’s own writings with friends’ memories and improvisational add-ons to celebrate a bold and surprising life Vivid . . . a magical kind of post-mortem autobiography . . . The Swimmer is a wonderful testament to a unique and very charming man Deakin has become the unofficial patron saint of wild swimmers . . . Barkham mines Deakin's notebooks and interviews his family, friends and lovers to create this beautifully immersive biography Deakin was an extraordinary man in an extraordinary moment A long-awaited biography of the late, great writer, environmentalist and moat-dipper . . . This is a mightily accomplished biography . . . a skilful piece of theatre