Roger Deakin Audiobooks

The man whose Waterlog started wild swimming, gone among the trees in Wildwood

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Who is Roger Deakin?

Roger Deakin (born 1943) was an English writer, documentary-maker and environmentalist. He co-founded Common Ground, the arts, culture and environment organisation, and served as its trustee – but his lasting fame rests on a single book. Waterlog, the only book he published in his lifetime, topped the UK bestseller charts and founded nothing less than the wild swimming movement.

Few writers can claim to have changed national behaviour with one volume; Deakin did. He died in 2006, and his stature has only grown since – Patrick Barkham published a biography, The Swimmer, in 2023 – leaving him established as one of the quiet patron saints of British nature writing.

Roger Deakin in audiobooks

Wildwood, his book in our catalogue, reached readers after his death – Waterlog was the only one published in his lifetime – which lends the listening a certain poignancy. As the title suggests, this is Deakin among the trees, and it carries the qualities that made Waterlog a phenomenon: an environmentalist’s knowledge worn lightly, and a documentary-maker’s eye for the telling specific. Nature writing of this kind is ideally suited to audio – it is a genre about paying attention, and a voice in the ear enforces exactly that. For UK listeners, the woods he describes are the ones outside the window; few audiobooks make better company for a walk.