The Swimmer

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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 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—Alex Preston, Observer

[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—Amy-Jane Beer, Guardian

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—New Statesman, ‘Books of the Year’

Barkham’s book succeeds in evoking a fascinating, creative, complicated man—Times Literary Supplement

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—Robert Macfarlane

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—Blake Morrison, Observer

Vivid . . . a magical kind of post-mortem autobiography . . . The Swimmer is a wonderful testament to a unique and very charming man—Daily Mail

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—Financial Times, ‘What to Read this Summer’

Deakin was an extraordinary man in an extraordinary moment—Times

A long-awaited biography of the late, great writer, environmentalist and moat-dipper . . . This is a mightily accomplished biography . . . a skilful piece of theatre’—Sue Brooks, Caught by the RiverPatrick 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.GB

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