For the last six years of his life, Roger Deakin kept notebooks in which he wrote his daily thoughts, impressions, feelings and observations. Discursive, personal and often impassioned, they reveal the way he saw the world, whether it be observing the teeming ecosystem that was Walnut Tree Farm, thinking about the wider environment, walking in his fields, on Mellis Common or on his travels at home, or contemplating his past and his present life.
"Notes from Walnut Tree Farm" collects the very best of these writings, capturing Roger's extraordinary, restless curiosity about the natural and human worlds, his love of literature and music, his knack for making unusual and apposite connections, and of course his distinct and subversive charm and humour. Together they cohere to present a passionate, engaged and - in spite of the worst pressures of contemporary life - optimistic view of our changing world.
A filmmaker and writer with a particular interest in nature and the environment, Roger Deakin was the author of the highly acclaimed Waterlog and Wildwood. He lived in Suffolk, and died there in August 2006, aged 63.
'Superb. Totally fresh and vivid' - Chris Yates 'Deakin's account sings, as unruly and robust as the world he bore witness to ... Deakin's greatest gift is to make the ecologically minded life a matter of gleeful fun' Observer 'If anything this book is superior to Deakin's previous book Wildwood, which is saying something, since that was marvellous. The diary form works beautifully ... In just a few words, Deakin can delight and inspire in equal measure' - Tom Hodgkinson