It is strange to come to know Roger Deakin so intimately and yet not know him at all. Like many others, I first met him in the pages of Waterlog when I read how he slipped into the spring-fed ditch beside his old farmhouse and swam during a summer thunderstorm.
This classic of British nature writing has inspired many of us to swim outdoors and savour the wild world. Possessed of a naturalist’s eye for detail and a comic’s sense of the ridiculous, he was a warm, witty and welcoming guide as he breast-stroked through the ponds, lakes and rivers of Britain.
Like many readers, I imagined he would be a