Description

BEST BOOK OF 2023 ACCORDING TO THE NEWSTATESMAN AND OBSERVER

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

Publisher Review

Deakin's greatest gift - indeed, his legacy - is to make the ecologically minded life a matter of gleeful fun -- Olivia Laing * Observer * In just a few words, Deakin can delight and inspire in equal measure -- Tom Hodgkinson Roger Deakin can be counted as one of the greatest of all Nature writers. He has a fine eye, and an acute ear for things the rest of us have grown too blase to hear -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday * Deakin's book's are full of unexpected treasures and destined to be discovered anew by generations to come * Sunday Telegraph *