The Swimmer

BEST BOOK OF 2023 ACCORDING TO THE NEWSTATESMAN AND OBSERVER

'The Swimmer is a wonderful, original achievement; teeming with stories, glittering with images, and experimental in form and tone' Robert Macfarlane

Roger Deakin, author of the immortal Waterlog, was a man of many parts: maverick ad-man, cider-maker, teacher, environmentalist, music promoter and filmmaker. But, above all, he was the restorer of ancient Walnut Tree Farm in Suffolk, the heartland where 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 and lovers. Delving deep into Deakin’s library of words, Patrick Barkham draws from notebooks, diaries, letters and recordings to conjure his voice back to glorious life in these pages.

'A rich, strange and compelling work of creative memoir that beautifully honours and elevates the life and work of its subject' Alex Preston, Observer