The Swimmer: The Wild Life of Roger Deakin

Product Information

He would love to see more green spaces for all children to play, with everyone, whether growing up in the countryside, town or city, living just a short walk from mini reserves. Barkham said: “Roger is one of the most interesting members of the most distinctive and compelling generation that ever lived – those who came of age in the 1960s and brought about a cultural, sexual, musical and ultimately environmental revolution. It has been a joy to inhabit Roger’s world and listen to the memories of so many of his generation. I hope I’ve given true voice to the spirit, the love and the struggles of Roger and his friends here.”

Roger Deakin (11 Februar 1943 – 19 August 2006)​ gilt als einer der Begründer des Wild Swimming in Großbritannien, dem Schwimmen in offenen Gewässern wie Seen und Flüssen, aber auch kleinen Teichen oder Bächen. Sein Buch "Waterlog", die Beschreibung ​wie er Großbritannien in den unterschiedlichsten Wasserwegen durchquert, gilt als eines der wichtigsten Bücher zu diesem Thema. His most recent book, Wild Isles, accompanied David Attenborough’s latest television series exploring the spectacular, and threatened, wildlife of Great Britain. The Swimmer is a new book on the writer Roger Deakin; a well known character and formative influence on wild swimming and nature writing. It charts Deakin's life from school days, all the way to his untimely death at the age of 63.

The toponym "Barkham" is derived from the Old English bercheham [2 ] meaning "birch home" referring to the birch trees on the edge of Windsor Forest. [3 ] The name evolved via forms including Berkham' in the 14th century and Barcombe in the 18th century. [2 ] 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" Deakin likened the tendrils of the tumour that killed him to tree roots penetrating his brain and lived just long enough to be delighted by the concept of the wood wide web, a fitting mycelial metaphor for his relentless urge to make connections of his own. That mission has outlasted him, and this extraordinary insight into his life will lend new complexity and reach to the network.

Rev. David Davies (1741–1819) was Rector of Barkham from 1782 until his death in 1819. [2 ] He studied the condition of the labouring poor, recorded statistics of their wages, cost of food, etc. in various districts of England and Scotland. [2 ] He published his findings in 1785 in the form of a book called Cases of Labourers in Husbandry Stated and Considered. [2 ] The resulting Frankenstein’s narrative is in some places intercut with verbatim contributions from Deakin’s friends – ‘chums’, invariably – and acquaintances. Barkham explains that these testimonies ‘provide multiple interpretations of the same events, and cast doubt on the idea of life as one simple flow’. For a little while, there’s some fun to be had here, as this or that romantic recollection butts up against some other chum’s flat contradiction. ‘My childhood unfolded during an era of austerity … Money was a constant worry for my parents,’ says Barkham as Deakin, only for Deakin’s cousin John to chip in: ‘He never went without, I’m sure of that … I remember an awful lot of stuff at their house.’ Later we hear about the Waterlog launch party, which was either ‘a buzzy, great event’ where ‘we did really naughty swimming’ or a not ‘really riotous evening’ where ‘we were all standing around rather awkwardly’. Like many readers, I imagined he would be a dream dinner party guest but, in the end, I never met him – he died, suddenly, aged just 63, in 2006. For years, I enjoyed his writing but also pondered the distinctiveness of his generation and its value – my parents were the same age and, like Roger, had moved at the end of the 60s to seek a new kind of life in the East Anglian countryside. There is a sense that Roger was making notes for a memoir throughout his life. The set pieces in his notebooks about his childhood; his uncle Laddie, the anarchist and Grandpa Wood; and at Haberdashers’ Aske’s Hampstead school, the camps at Beaulieu Road organised by Barry Goater, the biology teacher’ who infected us all with his wild enthusiasm’. It surfaces again in 1975 at 23 Queen’s Gardens in London after he had left Cambridge and worked as an Ad Man for a few years — ‘the flat of a rampant entrepreneur’, where friends (chums) came and went and Roger earned enough money to decide what he really wanted to do. After a desert island trip to Formentera he thought he knew.The last Act covers the funeral and the memorial a year later at Walnut Tree Farm. Everyone made a contribution, names which are familiar to me now, eloquent and deeply, deeply moving in their recollections. Most of all, Rufus Deakin saying “Tony Axon and Robert Macfarlane made the best speeches. Mum (Jenny), Margot and Serena got up together and spoke together which made me cry” (me, too). These are the three women with whom Roger experienced the longest, most ecstatic and most painful relationships. An open field system of farming prevailed in the parish until early in the 19th century. Parliament passed the Inclosure Act for Barkham in 1813, but it was not implemented until 1821. [2 ] Parish church [link]

Here, on the edge of Mellis Common, near Diss, he stripped bare and rebuilt a house, and a community. In the early days he worked in London and returned at weekends to tear down walls, patch up beams, cooking and sleeping outside with groups of friends. Barkham captures the ambiguity between the casual, affable free spirit persona and the tightly strung single child-man who wants to control the show. In addition the counterpoint of social and sexual openness in the book, takes us through Deakin's loves and losses. The present manor house is a late 18th century [2 ] Georgian building of two wings of differing dates. [4 ] Barkham had two moated farm-houses. [2 ] One of these survives, having been divided into two cottages. [2 ] Vivid [...] a magical kind of post-mortem autobiography [...] The Swimmer is a wonderful testament to a unique and very charming man" Bell Founders". Dove's Guide for Church Bell Ringers . http://dove.cccbr.org.uk/founders.php . Retrieved 17 July 2010.What we have to decide is whether life is a little, cautious, grasping affair, or whether it is wonderful’. There is a picture in The Swimmer of Roger as a toddler sitting in a pram staring at some pigeons. He is frowning with the intensity of it and a line of adult men stand behind admiringly. a b c d e f Ford, David Nash (2004). "Barkham". Royal Berkshire History. Nash Ford Publishing . http://www.berkshirehistory.com/villages/barkham.html . Retrieved 11 December 2010. Nature is the gift which keeps giving. Foxley is not just an amazing place for wildlife; it is also storing carbon. No-one was thinking about carbon or mental health when it was saved, but now people are coming here to help anxiety and depression. It’s enriching us all.” I think sometimes people are a little intimidated about visiting a nature reserve because they feel they don't know enough about nature. Parents worry their children will be bored or they won't be able to help them identify birds or plants. It doesn't matter! My boyhood best friend is a farmer. I totally believe in working with farmers and not against them. The 1980s were a low point. Since then things have improved so much. A new generation are farming in such a different way.”

Norfolk Wildlife Trust was Britain's first Wildlife Trust, launched in 1926 with the acquisition of Cley Marshes. It has 60-plus nature reserves, more than 36,000 members and 1,200 active volunteers. Roger also campaigned to preserve woodland, hedgerows and ancient rights of way and was a founder director of the arts and environmental charity Common Ground. In the beginning, I assumed that not having met Roger would bequeath me a crisp, neutral gaze. Later, I craved five minutes in his company. His education taught him how to reason but he chose to live as a romantic – by following his feelings. I wanted to feel that innate sympathy that comes from sharing a space with another living being. At least Roger and I shared the same sky: we loved the same woods, winds and moods. I discovered that he had moved his mum into a cottage in the Suffolk town of Eye in the 1990s, just when my dad moved to another cottage 50 yards away. Roger and I were regular visitors to our parents. Surely we both stood in the queue in Eye greengrocers one Saturday morning. My dad could name every species of bird and every plant, he seemed to be a wildlife superman, but he didn’t have superpowers with butterflies. We learned about them together.” 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.That you don’t really see the joins in the enterprise is credit to Barkham’s skill as a writer, but also as an organiser of content. The story here is largely chronological, but the way it is told, the movement between the jagged present tense of the journals, the more meditative reflectiveness of the notebooks written late in life and the wistful reminiscences of friends lends the whole endeavour a sense of multidimensional dynamism. Eventually it was his full-time home, and a focus of the counter-culture movement which pulsed through the Waveney valley in the 1970s. Barkham S James". Dove's Guide for Church Bell Ringers . http://dove.cccbr.org.uk/detail.php?searchString=Barkham&DoveID=BARKHAM . Retrieved 17 July 2010. Families: Rev. Peter Ditchfield". Arborfield Local History Society. Arborfield Local History Society . http://www.arborfieldhistory.org.uk/C20/families_Ditchfield.htm . Retrieved 8 July 2010. If you're coming to Coles by car, why not take advantage of the 2 hours free parking at Sainsbury's Pioneer Square - just follow the signs for Pioneer Square as you drive into Bicester and park in the multi-storey car park above the supermarket. Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you. You don't need to shop in Sainsbury's to get the free parking! Where to Find Us