The Swimmer: The Wild Life of Roger Deakin

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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. But there is something particularly striking about Roger’s questing generation. This generation suffered the misfortune to be born during the chronic anxiety of the Second World War, but Roger’s cohort, or at least its white male members, may be the most fortunate generation ever. Their free-roaming childhoods unfolded as the economy boomed, they missed national service and came of age when sex was invented, between the Lady Chatterley trial and the Beatles’ first EP. Roger and his peers enjoyed great gifts – a welfare state, social mobility, plentiful jobs, affordable property, accessible global travel – but they struggled, too. In hindsight, the 60s’ social, cultural and psychological revolution seems inevitable but social transformation has to be fought for. He embraced new styles of thinking, feeling and living.

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] 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 ] 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!ACT 13: The Author. An audience of thousands who have read the book and want to applaud. Roger loved it. All the attention that came with the publicity. Radio programmes, interviews, fan mail, giving talks and making new girlfriends. Richard Mabey is there, and very appreciative of Roger’s writing. “I may have done some innovative things, but I’ve never, ever achieved the lightness of touch and intimacy of prose, which I think at its best, is a wonder.” Robert Macfarlane, too. He and Roger became close in 2003, going on trips together while Robert was writing The Wild Places and Roger was making plans for Wildwood. I really believe that nature enriches us all and I mean that in monetary terms as well as spiritual. It’s easy to be really despairing but the only antidote is local action and to live more in harmony with nature.” 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.” 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. Another prominent farming family, that of Ball, is erroneously said to be that of George Washington's mother, Mary Ball Washington. They lived in the parish from the late 15th to the mid-17th century, but William Ball, the man once thought to have emigrated to Virginia and become Mary's great grandfather, actually died in London and his family lived in the East Berkshire area for at least two more generations. [3 ]

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. 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" It is working to rebuild fragmented ecological networks across the county and runs projects to connect children with the natural world. 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.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. 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.” Vivid [...] a magical kind of post-mortem autobiography [...] The Swimmer is a wonderful testament to a unique and very charming man"

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. From childhood Roger adored the natural world. From Mellis he threw himself into self-sufficiency and environmentalism. He made music and films and radio, and made friends - with local aristocrats, builders, craftspeople, poachers... 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. So I spliced together many thousand shards of memoir, fact and feeling found in his notebooks, letters, jottings and journalism. Then I juxtaposed his enraptured view of the world with the recollections of his friends. Sometimes there is harmony between them; at other times realities clash violently. What emerges, I hope, is a feel for Roger’s passion and poetry, and an honest, unsparing portrait of a life. Roger and I shared the same sky, we loved the same woods

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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. 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. In 2004, the signs of illness were becoming apparent. Confusion, forgetfulness, headaches. All the main players are on the stage now. So hard, especially for Roger himself, to believe what was happening. He died at Walnut Tree Farm on August 19th 2006, aged 63. 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.

From 1st July 2021, VAT will be applicable to those EU countries where VAT is applied to books - this additional charge will be collected by Fed Ex (or the Royal Mail) at the time of delivery. Shipments to the USA & Canada: Roger was best known as a wild swimmer but he was much more besides. He was an ad man in Swinging Soho who moonlit as an upcycler selling stripped pine furniture to hipsters (including a young Judi Dench) on Portobello Road; he embraced self-sufficiency in Suffolk then became an inspirational English teacher; he was a filmmaker, a musical impresario, and he co-founded Common Ground, a prescient environmental charity which championed “ordinary” nature – verges, hedgerows, orchards. Despite finding the role that best suited his creative mind in his 50s – a writer – he never published another book in his lifetime, succumbing to a brain tumour that quietly grew as he struggled to finish a book about trees, Wildwood, which was published after his death.Simon Prosser, publishing director, acquired world volume rights, including audio and serial, to The Swimmer from agent Karolina Sutton at Curtis Brown Associates, now at CAA. It will publish on 25th May 2023. 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. 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.” However, there was another book that he had written and that would be out soon. There was news of another being brought together from his notes by his literary executor, Robert Macfarlane. 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.