With each passing year, the love and respect afforded to Roger Deakin seems to blossom wildly. Justifiably too. Waterlog was one of the cornerstone texts that helped build Caught by the River; it’s lost none of it’s clout in the time since we first came across it. In fact, it seems to pick up new converts year on year – whether that’s people picking up Roger’s ‘pastoral anarchist’ views of the countryside, others swimming the route of the book or readers simply stopping to take a few more minutes to look out of the window each day and think about how they interact with the environment.

Next month, three of Roger contemporaries get together to celebrate the great man’s legacy in his native Suffolk. The event – held on February 9th in St Nicholas Hall, Diss – features Ronald Blythe (author of Akenfield) Richard Mabey (Flora Britannica, Nature Cure) and Robert Macfarlane (author of The Wild Places, The Old Ways and chair of this year’s Man Booker) who will each read from Roger’s work over the years. Making this event unique is the fact that they’ll not just read from his hugely acclaimed published writings. As the event organisers say: “There have been many events of discussion about Roger and his writing. This will be different and in a way unique. It will be by him – it’s all about his voice, his words, his way of seeing things. There has never been an event where the different strands of his work – writing, radio, TV – have been brought together.”

Can’t think of a better way of celebrating one of the most truly original voices in modern British nature writing. Click here for more information.