18.04.2024 - Indoor Meeting : The Swimmer

Speaker: Patrick Barkham
Reporter: Sue Gale

April brings the AGM, which can often seem a bit dry, but as usual the AGM business was dispatched in a few minutes and we moved on to one of the most entertaining talks we have enjoyed for a long time. ‘The Swimmer’ is the title of Patrick Barkham’s latest book – a biography of Roger Deakin who was an environmentalist among many other things and is credited with starting the current enthusiasm for wild swimming with his own book ‘Waterlog’. Indeed, the black Speedos he wore when swimming across Britain are to be found in the library at UEA!

​Central to Deakin’s life, and to the book, is the moated farmhouse at Mellis in Suffolk that he bought when it was in near total collapse in the 1960s. Here he took to wild swimming in the cleaned-up moat. He had been born an only child to older parents in 1943, and had a pretty idyllic childhood, although dominated by a witty but forceful mother. He won a scholarship to Haberdasher’s school and went on to study English at Oxford. Kingsley Amis was his tutor there. As his parents had been far from ‘posh’ his education was an example of the social mobility that was becoming possible at that time. After a spell in the Royal Navy he became an advertising executive, but his lifestyle really didn’t fit that image! He may have been the first person to buy a shepherd’s hut to live in and drove anopen-top Morgan. On his good salary he could have bought any home he chose, but what he did
choose was the decrepit farmhouse at Mellis, which he persuaded the farmer to sell to him with 12 acres of land. He named it Walnut Tree Farm and took to life as a smallholder. Self-sufficiency was all the rage at that time. He rebuilt the farm but eventually tired of the farming life and became a teacher of English at Diss Grammar School. He must have been a shock to the system with his informal manners and his shock of long curly hair. When he left after 3 years his pupils bought him a goat as a leaving present.
Living at Walnut Tree Farm Deakin became a carpenter and campaigner. He worked on the Save the Whale campaign for Friends of the Earth, and in 1983 co-founded Common Ground, emphasising his
belief in the importance of local activism. One of his big successes was the saving of Cow Pasture Lane, near his home, from being ploughed up to increase the size of the fields. Throughout all this Roger Deakin’s love life was pretty turbulent. His first marriage to Jenny was dissolved in 1980. He then fell in love with Serena Inskip, who became the only woman to share Walnut Tree Farm with him.
They were together for 10 years, but it seems he was violent to her as well as writing poems and crafting presents for her. After they split, he finally got together with Margot Waddell, who had turned down his marriage proposal in the 60s but had remained a close friend and correspondent ever since.
However, this relationship broke up in 1995 after only 5 years, at which time he came up with the idea of writing a ‘swimming book’ – later Waterlog. The book, describing his bid to swim across the UK, was published in 1999 to much acclaim, and led to many people taking up swimming in the rivers, lakes, ponds and ditches that he described. He travelled widely in the early 2000s to research his later book ‘Wildwood’ which was published after his death, aged 63, of a brain tumour. 
Patrick made the unusual decision to write his biography in the first person, as if written by Roger Deakin himself. Patrick’s extensive research had given him access to many letters and notes of Deakin’s and he had obtained accounts from many of his friends and partners, so he was able to produce The Swimmer using mainly Deakin’s own words. Patrick gave us a fascinating talk about a fascinating character. Many thanks to him.