Roger Deakin – at ease in the countryside as a poacher with deep pockets

Few authors have left such an immediate legacy as Roger Deakin. When he died of a sudden illness in 2007, aged 63, he had written just two books: Waterlog, which set off the wild swimming craze, and the even more influential Wildwood, which helped kickstart the publishing phenomenon of nature writing. Yet both books only really became well known after his death. During his lifetime he was, at best, a cult taste. When I approached the BBC 20 years ago with the idea that he should present a televisual version of Waterlog in which he swam ‘across’ England, through its ponds, lakes and rivers, I was told no one was interested in wild swimming – and who was Roger Deakin anyway?

Patrick Barkham has set out to answer that question. The results are unexpected even for those of us who knew Deakin. A man of many lives and compartments (and relationships), he himself thought that what you needed to write was ‘energy, sexual potency and solitude’.