Roger Deakin
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Roger Stuart Deakin (11 February 1943 – 19 August 2006) was an English writer, documentary-maker and environmentalist. He was a co-founder and trustee of Common Ground, the arts, culture and environment organisation. ''Waterlog'', the only book he published in his lifetime, topped the UK best seller charts and founded the wild swimming movement.


Life

Deakin was born in
Watford Watford () is a town and borough in Hertfordshire, England, 15 miles northwest of Central London, on the River Colne. Initially a small market town, the Grand Junction Canal encouraged the construction of paper-making mills, print works, a ...
, Hertfordshire, and was an only child. His father was a railway clerk, from
Walsall Walsall (, or ; locally ) is a market town and administrative centre in the West Midlands (county), West Midlands County, England. Historic counties of England, Historically part of Staffordshire, it is located north-west of Birmingham, east ...
in the Midlands, who died when Deakin was 17. Educated at
The Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School Haberdashers' Boys' School (also known as Haberdashers', Habs, or Habs Boys), until September 2021 known as Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, is a public school for pupils age 4 to 18 in Elstree, Hertfordshire, England. The school is a me ...
, an
independent school An independent school is independent in its finances and governance. Also known as private schools, non-governmental, privately funded, or non-state schools, they are not administered by local, state or national governments. In British Eng ...
, based at the time in
Hampstead Hampstead () is an area in London, which lies northwest of Charing Cross, and extends from Watling Street, the A5 road (Roman Watling Street) to Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland. The area forms the northwest part of the Lon ...
in north west London, followed by
Peterhouse Peterhouse is the oldest constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England, founded in 1284 by Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely. Today, Peterhouse has 254 undergraduates, 116 full-time graduate students and 54 fellows. It is quite o ...
,
University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
, Deakin read English, under the auspices of writer
Kingsley Amis Sir Kingsley William Amis (16 April 1922 – 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, short stories, radio and television scripts, and works of social an ...
. Deakin first worked in advertising as a copywriter and creative director for Colman Prentis and Varley, while living in Bayswater, London. He was responsible for the
National Coal Board The National Coal Board (NCB) was the statutory corporation created to run the nationalised coal mining industry in the United Kingdom. Set up under the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946, it took over the United Kingdom's collieries on "v ...
slogan "Come home to a real fire". Following this, he taught French and English at Diss Grammar School for three years. In 1968, he bought Walnut Tree Farm, a semi-ruined Elizabethan moated, wood-beamed farmhouse on the edge of
Mellis Common Mellis Common is a 59 hectare nature reserve in Mellis in Suffolk. It is managed by the Suffolk Wildlife Trust. The common has changed little over hundreds of years, and is still managed by traditional methods of grazing and hay cutting. Flora in ...
in Suffolk, near Diss, which he rebuilt and developed over many years and where he lived until his death. He dredged the moat, where he swam daily, planted woodland and bought more of the surrounding fields, where he grew hay and wild flowers. The land included several shepherds huts and Deakin went on to build a cabin for his son Rufus. The house was without central heating but housed an
Aga Aga or AGA may refer to: Business * Architectural Glass and Aluminum (AGA), a glazing contractor, established in 1970 * AGA (automobile), ''Autogen Gasaccumulator AG'', 1920s German car company *AGA AB, ''Aktiebolaget Svenska Gasaccumulator'', a ...
and wide open fireplaces. A colony of swallows lived in the main chimney and for several years chickens and ducks shared his kitchen. Deakin married Jenny Hind in 1973 with whom he had a son, Rufus, before the marriage was dissolved in 1982. Deakin died, aged 63, in
Mellis Mellis is a small village in Suffolk, England. It has the largest area of unfenced common land in England. Oliver Cromwell exercised his troops in Mellis. It once had a railway station on the main line between London and Norwich, and a small b ...
, Suffolk. He had been diagnosed with a brain tumour only four months previously. He is survived by his partner Alison Hastie and his son. His archive has been given to the University of East Anglia, including writings on ancient trees, along with film banks, photographs, journals and Deakin's swimming trunks. The nature writer Robert Macfarlane was Deakin's literary executor. He commented:
"Roger was one of those rare people whose character and passion is to be found in everything he made, collected, drew or wrote. His notes, written to himself, provide an insight into a beautiful mind and a sweet man. This archive will capture what it was like to be a passionate, engaged, subversive country intellectual living through a time of profound change. It is very appropriate that Roger's papers will remain within his beloved East Anglia."


Work

Walnut Tree Farm and its surroundings were the subject of two
BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
documentaries, ''The House'' and ''The Garden'', that he produced. A further documentary, ''Cigarette on the Waveney'', covered the subject of a canoe trip down the nearby
River Waveney The River Waveney is a river which forms the boundary between Suffolk and Norfolk, England, for much of its length within The Broads. The "ey" part of the name means "river" thus the name is tautological. Course The source of the River Wavene ...
. He also made several television documentary films covering subjects as diverse as rock music,
Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...
,
Hank Wangford Samuel Hutt, known by the stage name Hank Wangford (born 15 November 1940), is an English country and western songwriter. "Hank is a good smoke screen. He can do things I can't do. He's my clown," says Dr. Hutt, who has been struggling to bal ...
, allotments and the world of horse racing. Deakin appears in ''The Wild Places'' by Robert Macfarlane, whose TV documentary ''The Wild Places of Essex'' includes scenes shot at Walnut Tree Farm. In 1999, Deakin's acclaimed book ''Waterlog'' was published by Chatto and Windus. Inspired in part by the short story '' The Swimmer'' by John Cheever, it describes his experiences of ' wild swimming' in Britain's rivers and lakes and advocates
open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...
to the countryside and waterways. The book also inspired a one-hour BBC Four documentary film ''Wild Swimming'', in August 2010, presented by the anthropologist
Alice Roberts Alice May Roberts (born 19 May 1973) is an English biological anthropologist, biologist, television presenter and author. Since 2012 she has been Professor of the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham. She was President ...
. The film stated that he was the source for the voice of ''the swimmer'' in
Alice Oswald Alice Priscilla Lyle Oswald (née Keen; born 31 August 1966) is a British poet from Reading, Berkshire. Her work won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002 and the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2017. In September 2017, she was named as BBC Radio 4's second Poe ...
's 48-page poem ''Dart'', about the
River Dart The River Dart is a river in Devon, England, that rises high on Dartmoor and flows for to the sea at Dartmouth. Name Most hydronyms in England derive from the Brythonic language (from which the river's subsequent names ultimately derive fr ...
in
Devon Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devon is ...
.Wild Swimming BBC site
retrieved 13 November 2013.
Deakin's book ''Wildwood'' appeared posthumously in 2007. It describes a series of journeys across the globe that Deakin made to meet people whose lives are intimately connected to trees and wood. In November 2008, ''Notes from Walnut Tree Farm'' was published to high critical appraisal. Alison Hastie and Terence Blacker, Suffolk critic and novelist, co-edited a collection of writing taken from Deakin's personal notebooks, largely focused on the wildlife and ecology of the area around his farmhouse. Deakin was a founder director of the arts and environmental charity Common Ground in 1982. Among his environmental causes, he worked to preserve woodland, ancient rights of way and
coppicing Coppicing is a traditional method of woodland management which exploits the capacity of many species of trees to put out new shoots from their stump or roots if cut down. In a coppiced wood, which is called a copse, young tree stems are repeate ...
techniques of Suffolk hedgerows.


References


Bibliography

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External links


Obituary from The GuardianRoger Deakin Archive, University of East Anglia''The Wild Places Of Essex'', BBC 2 television programme featuring Roger Deakin''Cigarette on the Waveney'', BBC Radio 4 programme by Roger Deakin

''The House'', BBC Radio 4 programme by Roger Deakin

''The Garden'', BBC Radio 4 programme by Roger Deakin
{{DEFAULTSORT:Deakin, Roger 1943 births 2006 deaths British nature writers English writers English environmentalists People educated at Haberdashers' Boys' School Alumni of Peterhouse, Cambridge Schoolteachers from Hertfordshire BBC people People from Mid Suffolk District People from Watford Deaths from brain cancer in England