Roger Deakin has a moat in his back garden in Suffolk. This is, it seems, not unusual in his neck of the woods. Every morning he slips into the dark, still water to commune with the newts and frogs and plants and birds and you name it which call the place home. It was during one such immersion "that the notion of a long swim through Britain began to form itself". He took further inspiration from John Cheever's classic story The Swimmer. "My journey too would have as much to do with the geography of my mind as with that of this country."
Fortunately, Deakin is as strong a writer as he is a swimmer, and his tale glides as smoothly from one part of hidden Britain to the next as an eel slips across a fen. There is much understated humour, and his erudition on the local history and flora and fauna is so easy as to be almost intimidating. Wholly refreshing.