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27 June 2024

Why Roger Deakin’s Waterlog will change your life

Published 25 years ago today, the foundational text of wild swimming continues to tempt readers into Britain’s rivers.

By George Monaghan

The second-longest chain of successful successive recommendations I’ve known one book to make is two: the longest is seven. That was Roger Deakin’s Waterlog – the blue paperback came from my uncle to me, then went to my friend, his dad, then three more men. The handover comprises an explanation that “it’s the seminal text of outdoor swimming in Britain” shortly followed by the instruction: “just read it”. 

Waterlog, first published 25 years ago, in June 1999, has seen an extraordinary afterlife. The book was a bestseller upon release, and Deakin – who died in 2006, at 63, from a brain tumour – was respected as an environmentalist, documentary maker, and writer. But he did not live to see wild swimming become a national movement, nor his book credited as its foundational document. 

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