The Swimmer cover art

The Swimmer

The Wild Life of Roger Deakin

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The Swimmer

By: Patrick Barkham
Narrated by: Gordon Griffin
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About this listen

The definitive biography of beloved author, Roger Deakin

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.

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 this book. To hear this book is to listen in to a dream conversation between a writer and those who knew him intimately.

©2023 Patrick Barkham (P)2023 W.F.Howes Ltd
Art & Literature Authors Environmentalists & Naturalists Professionals & Academics

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They say don’t meet your heroes. Same goes for biographies I think. It’s so well & cleverly written. Clearly so much researched has been done to write this book. But Roger is much more complex person then I anticipated & I went on somewhat of a rollercoaster of emotions about what I thought of him, but then we are all flawed. It held my attention for the full 17 hours. I will definitely read more books by Patrick Barkham now.

The life of Roger Deakin

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