A review by tdbrwn
Waterlog by Roger Deakin

The premise of swimming around Britain is a convenient peg on which to hang this charming travelogue about all things water. Deakin strikes an elegiac tone when he's writing about the history of river swimming in various pre-industrial edens and the declining communities of public pool-swimmers (increasingly caught in the net of apparently unrestrained capitalism). However, what might have been overly sentimental is always offset by Deakin's well-placed levity. The book is an always interesting tribute to a particular moment in our changing relationship with water.