by Roger Deakin
A shooting star, and another shooting star.
Notes
Notes have been included only for those of Roger’s friends who have work in the public domain which readers may wish to follow up.
JANUARY
p. 2 Ronald Blythe’s books include Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village (1969), Word from Wormingford (1998) and The Assassin (2004).
p. 2 Dr ‘Bird’ Partridge, a psychiatrist who worked at the Maudsley Hospital in London, was a friend and neighbour of John Nash.
p. 3 John Nash (1893–1977), the English painter, illustrator and engraver, was an old friend of Ronald Blythe and, with his wife, was the previous owner of Bottengoms Farm.
p. 4 Jayne Ivimey is an artist who has specialized in capturing the East Anglian landscape and studying the issues affecting it.
p. 5 The work of artist Helen Napper, who lives in Suffolk, has been exhibited in London, New York and Santa Monica.
p. 9 A transmocho tree is one pollarded during its life to provide for the specific requirements of ship-building.
p. 14 Richard Jefferies, At Home on the Earth. Selected and introduced by Jeremy Hooker, Green Books (2001).
p. 15 Eddie Krutysza is the owner-manager of Hatton Farm Nurseries in Metfield, Suffolk.
p. 17 The writer and naturalist Richard Mabey’s books include Flora Britannica (1996), Nature Cure (2005)and Beechcomings: The Narrative of Trees (2007).
p. 18 Colin Ward, Cotters and Squatters: The Hidden History of Housing, Five Leaves Publications (2002).
p. 19 The Robert Graves poem is ‘Love without hope’.
p. 19 Tony Barrell is an award-winning documentary maker who lives in Australia. He is the author of The Real Far East: Way Beyond Siberia (2007) and, with Rick Tanaka, Higher than Heaven: Japan, War and Everything (1996) and Okinawa Dreams OK (1998).
p. 20 Geoffrey Household’s classic thriller Rogue Male was one of Roger’s favourite books. Published in 1939, it tells the story of an unnamed Englishman who, having tried and failed to assassinate an unnamed German dictator, is tortured and then goes on the run from the dictator’s henchmen in ‘the green depths of Dorset’. Roger had heard that the exact location of the hollow-way where the hero of Rogue Male hid could be located in the Chideock Valley. He agreed with Rob Macfarlane (see note for page 41), who shared his enthusiasm’s for Household’s thriller, that they should go on a trip to test its description against the landscape. Macfarlane’s account of the trip is included in his book The Wild Places (2007).
p. 21 The Canadian author Elizabeth Smart’s affair with George Barker inspired her best-known work, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (1945).
FEBRUARY
p. 23 John Middleton Murry (1889–1957) was a prominent literary critic and minor member of the Bloomsbury Group.
p. 26 Mike Dibb’s documentaries include the influential BBC series Ways of Seeing (1972) and The Miles Davis Story, which was awarded an international Emmy in 2001 as arts documentary.
p. 26 David Nash, RA, is an internationally acclaimed sculptor who works mainly with wood. Roger’s account of meeting him can be found in Wildwood.
p. 28 Terence Blacker’s books include Kill Your Darlings (2000) and You Cannot Live as I Have Lived and Not End Up Like This: The Disgraceful Life and Times of Willie Donaldson (2006).
p. 37 Andrew Sanders is a film production designer whose credits include The Witches (1990), The Golden Bowl (2000), Possession (2002) and The White Countess (2005).
p. 38 Film director and writer Mike Hodges’s work includes Get Carter (1971), Croupier (1998) and I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead (2003).
p. 39 Ben Platts-Mills is a sculptor in wood who has public artworks sited in Suffok and Norfolk.
p. 41 Robert Macfarlane is the author of Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination (2003) and The Wild Places (2007).
p. 41 For Roger’s account of this trip, see pages 167–74.
p. 47 Kim Taplin, Tongues in Trees: Studies in Literature and Ecology, Green Books (1992).
p. 49 Eric Rolls, Australia, A Biography: The Beginnings from the Cosmos to the Genesis of Gondwana, and its Rivers, Forests, Flora, Fauna and Fecundity, University of Queensland Press (2000).
p. 49 Les Murray’s collections of essays, which include A Working Forest: Selected Prose (1997) and The Quality of Sprawl: Thoughts about Australia (1999), are still not available from a British publisher.
MARCH
p. 57 An account of Roger’s experience coppicing with his friend and neighbour Keith Dunthorne, a master thatcher, can be found in Wildwood.
p. 65 Alison Hastie, who was Roger’s partner during the last years of his life, is the founder of the ethical footwear company Green Shoes.
APRIL
p. 68 Redgrave Fen, officially known as Redgrave and Lopham Fen, is a National Nature Reserve owned and run by the Suffolk Wildlife Trust.
p. 74 Derek Jarman (1942–94) was an eminent avant-garde film-maker and artist.
p. 80 Microcosmos: Le Peuple de l’herbe (1996), a documentary film directed by Claude Nuridsany and Marie Perénnou, revealed the lives of insects with startling and dramatic close-up photography.
p. 84 The artist Mary Newcomb (1922–2008) lived in Suffolk and Norfolk for over forty years. A chapter in Wildwood is devoted to her.
p. 91 W. G. Hoskins, The Making of the English Landscape, Hodder & Stoughton (1955). Oliver Rackham, The History of the Countryside, J.M. Dent (1986).
p. 97 E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Really Mattered, Blond and Briggs (1973).
MAY
p. 102 The naturalist and explorer Charles Waterton (1782–1865) was author of Wanderings in South America (1825) and the three-volume Essays on Natural History (1838, 1844, 1857).
p. 105 Mike Westbrook, the jazz pianist and composer, was an old friend of Roger’s.
p. 108 Gary Rowland is a designer and artist.
p. 110 The Australian broadcaster and author Ramona Koval, who presents The Book Show on ABC Radio National and whose books include Tasting Life Twice – Conversations with Remarkable Writers (2005), travelled through central Australia with Roger. His account of their journey can be found in Wildwood.
p. 120 Richard Flanagan’s books include Gould’s Book of Fish (2002) and The Unknown Terrorist (2007).
p. 122 The poet and translator Oliver Bernard’s works include Country Matters (1961), Rimbaud: Collected Poems (1986) and his autobiography Getting Over It (1992).
p. 122 Tony Weston, one of Roger’s oldest friends, is a potter and poet. His poetry collections include Not for Cats (1997) and The Rainbow in the Bruise (1998).
p. 123-4 This poem was read by Roger at his uncle Frank Crook’s birthday garden party in 2005.
p. 123 Wood was Roger’s family name on his mother’s side.
JUNE
p. 134 The twelfth-century church at Manaccan in Cornwall is renowned for the ancient fig tree which grows out of its walls.
p. 136 Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849).
p. 141 The folk singer-songwriter Steve Ashley has recorded nine solo albums, including the acclaimed Stroll On (1974). Roger was the subject of, and inspiration for, the song ‘Friend of the Rivers’ from his latest CD Time and Tide (2007).
p. 142 Iain Sinclair is the author of, among other books, London Orbital (2002) and Dining on Stones (2004) in which his journeys past Beckton Alp are discussed.
p. 147 Min Cooper is a cartoonist, illustrator and animator.
p. 149 Roger’s great-uncle Joe Deakin, part of the group known as ‘the Walsall anarchists’, was arrested 6 January 1892 and charged with bomb-making. He stood trial with other alleged conspirators, was found guilty and jailed for five years. It was later discovered that the conspiracy had been instigated by a police agent provocateur.
p. 151 The line ‘We were in love before we were introduced’ comes from Patrick Kavanagh’s poem ‘On Reading a Book of Co
mmon Wild Flowers’.
JULY
p. 155 This reference is to Roger’s days as an advertising copywriter. One of his lines, a famous slogan for the Coal Board, was ‘Come home to a real fire.’
p. 160. The quotation is from the Russian writer Andrey Platonov (1899 – 1951).
p. 162-3 The poet and gardener Alice Oswald’s work includes her collections The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile (1996), Dart (2002), which won the T. S. Eliot Prize, and Woods etc (2007).
p. 168 See note for page 20.
p. 168 Stephen Leather, Tunnel Rats, Hodder & Stoughton (1997).
p. 168 James Thurber, The Thurber Carnival (1945).
p. 174 The allusion to ‘a ballista defensive front-line system’ refers to the scene in Rogue Male (see note for page 20) in which the hero defends himself with a catapult, or ballista, constructed from cat-hide.
p. 174 W. H. Murray, Mountaineering in Scotland (1947).
p. 177 The novelist and screenplay writer Deborah Moggach’s works include Tulip Fever (1999), These Foolish Things (2004) and In the Dark (2007).
p. 180 Tony Axon, a lifelong friend of Roger, is the founder and publisher of the World of Information reference series.
p. 180 Joe Deakin – see note for page 149.
p. 182 An account of Roger’s meeting with the Australian artist and nomad John Wolseley is the subject of a chapter in Wildwood entitled ‘At Leatherarse Gully’.
p. 183 The painter, illustrator and designer David Holmes worked with Roger during his advertising days and illustrated Waterlog, Wildwood and this book.
AUGUST
p. 187 The Great Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, an internationally known ukulele ensemble, was playing at the Snape Maltings.
p. 188 In August 2001, Mugabe’s Zimbabwean army was reported to be ravaging the rainforest of the Congo with its logging operations.
p. 195 Barry Goater was Roger’s biology teacher at Haberdashers’ Aske’s School and went on to write The Butterflies and Moths of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight (1974) and British Pyralid Moths: A Guide to Their Identification (1986). An account of Roger’s reunion with him is to be found in Wildwood.
p. 198 History of the Countryside: see note for page 91.
p. 203 Francesca Greenoak and Clare Roberts, Wildlife in the Churchyard: The Plants and Animals of God’s Acre, Little Brown (1993).
p. 206 In 1865, Thomas Hardy was given the job of overseeing the exhumation and relocation of gravestones to make way for the railway station. He arranged the tombstones around an ash tree in St Pancras churchyard. It is now known as ‘the Hardy Tree’.
SEPTEMBER
p. 218-19 Dolomedes is a species of spider which includes the rare Fen Raft Spider, Dolomedes Plantarius, to be found at Redgrave and Lopham Fen near Walnut Tree Farm.
p. 220 The writer W. G. Sebald (1944–2001) wrote The Rings of Saturn (1998), an evocative and discursive account of a walk across East Anglia. The translator was Michael Hulse.
p. 221 ‘Richard Deacon-like scrap metal’ refers to the sculptor Richard Deacon who works in metal and wood.
p. 223 The ‘pagodas’ of Orford Ness are testing cells which were used for atomic bomb testing during the late 1950s and 1960s.
p. 235 Ivor Gurney (1890–1937), poet and composer.
OCTOBER
p. 237 ‘Barry Lopez-style’ is a reference to the American nature writer Barry Lopez and his book Of Wolves and Men (1979).
p. 238 Wellington here is Wellington School, Hatch End.
p. 241 The writer and thinker Satish Kumar is the editor of the magazine Resurgence, for which Roger wrote regularly, and Director of Programmes of the Schumacher College at Dartington Hall. His books include You Are, Therefore I Am: A Declaration of Dependence (2002) and Spiritual Compass: The Three Qualities of Life (2007).
p. 243 ‘Swinger of birches’: this phrase is from Robert Frost’s poem ‘Birches’.
p. 246 W. G. Sebald: see note for page 220.
p. 247 Puzzle Wood is a 14-acre ancient woodland in the Forest of Dean.
p. 252 Barry Goater: see note for page 195.
p. 262 The zoologist Desmond Morris’s work includes The Naked Ape (1967) and Watching: Encounters with Humans and Other Animals (2006).
NOVEMBER
p. 269 Touching Wood was the working title for the project that became Wildwood.
p. 272 The author Adam Nicholson’s books include Sea Room: An Island Life in the Hebrides (2001) and Earls of Paradise (2008).
p. 281 Peter Randall-Page is a sculptor whose large-scale commissions have been exhibited internationally.
p. 282 The composer and musician Harvey Brough’s work includes Requiem in Blue (1999) and Valete in Pace (2004). With Clara Sanabras, he formed the band Clara and the Real Lowdown, whose first CD was released in 2008.
p. 284 Roger’s account of his experience at Hell Gill can be read in Waterlog.
DECEMBER
p. 296 The Whole Earth Catalogue was the ultimate reference work for the counter-culture and has been described as an early forerunner of internet search engines. It was published twice a year between 1968 and 1972 and occasionally thereafter. The last edition was in 1998.
Acknowledgements
The editors would like to thank Rufus Deakin for giving them access to his father’s papers, and to express their gratitude to Roger’s literary executor Robert Macfarlane and his agent Georgina Capel for their support and encouragement throughout this project. Roger’s friends Tony Axon, Jules Cashford, Vicky Minet and Tony and Bundle Weston have provided invaluable advice and insights. Thanks are also due to Jack Sturgess for his reading of the final manuscript. The heroic task of typing up handwritten entries from the notebooks was achieved by Dianne Hood.
Once again David Holmes’s superb illustrations have been a perfect compliment to Roger’s writing.
The efficiency and enthusiasm of those working on the book at Hamish Hamilton has been exemplary. Special thanks go to Simon Prosser who commissioned and championed it, to Debbie Hatfield who oversaw its progress, and to Donna Poppy for her sympathetic and scrupulous line-editing.
