Böcker av Patrick Barkham

'The Swimmer is a wonderful, original achievement; teeming with stories, glittering with images, and experimental in form and tone' Robert MacfarlaneRoger Deakin is best known for his modern classic of nature writing, Waterlog, which frog-kicked the wild swimming movement into existence with wit, politics and poetry.But he was not simply a dazzling writer and eccentric Englishman. He took his counterculture to the countryside in the 1970s and rebuilt a 16th century farmhouse from its oak beams up. He turned to self-sufficiency, teaching and environmentalism. He became a music impresario and made films, radio programmes and hundreds of friends from all classes. He was a polymath, an enthusiast, an adventurer, a romantic and rebel.Delving deep into Roger Deakin's library of words, Patrick Barkham draws from notebooks, diaries, letters, recordings, published work and early drafts, to conjure his voice back to glorious life in these pages, revealing the inner life of an extraordinary man.'A rich, strange and compelling work of creative memoir that beautifully honours and elevates the life and work of its subject' Alex Preston, Observer

Wild Green Wonders brings you a selection of twenty years' worth of Patrick Barkham's writings for the Guardian, and it bears witness to the great many changes imposed upon this planet and the challenges lying ahead for the future of nature. From Norwegian wolves to protests against the HS2 rail, from peregrine falcons nesting by the Thames to Britain's last lion tamer, Barkham paints an ever changing portrait of contemporary wildlife. This collection also presents thought-provoking interviews with conservationists, scientists, activists and writers such as Rosamund Young, Ronald Blythe and other eco-luminaries, including Sir David Attenborough and Brian May. 'Siding with the planet is siding with the underdog, and this has motivated much of my journalism', Barkham writes. Wild Green Wonders is his chronicle.

BEST BOOK OF 2023 ACCORDING TO THE NEWSTATESMAN AND OBSERVERThe definitive biography of beloved author, Roger DeakinRoger Deakin, author of the immortal Waterlog and Wildwood, was a man of unusually many parts. A born writer who nonetheless took decades to write his first book, Roger was also variously - and sometimes simultaneously - maverick ad-man, seller of stripped pine furniture on the Portobello Road, cider-maker, teacher, environmentalist, music promoter, and filmmaker. But above all he was the restorer of ancient Walnut Tree Farm in Suffolk, the heartland which he shared with a host of visitors, both animal and human, and wrote about - as 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, lovers and neighbours.Delving deep into Roger Deakin's library of words, Patrick Barkham draws from notebooks, diaries, letters, recordings, published work and early drafts, to conjure his voice back to glorious life in these pages. To read this book is to listen in to a dream conversation between a writer and those who knew him intimately.