A born writer who nonetheless took decades to write his first book, Roger Deakin was also variously - and sometimes simultaneously - maverick ad-man, seller of stripped pine furniture, cider-maker, teacher, environmentalist, music promoter, and filmmaker. But above all he was the restorer of ancient Walnut Tree Farm in Suffolk, the heartland which he shared with a host of visitors, both animal and human, and wrote about with rare attention, intimacy, precision and poetry. Delving deep into Roger Deakin's library of words, Patrick Barkham draws from notebooks, diaries, letters, recordings, published work and early drafts, to conjure his voice back to glorious life in these pages. To read this book is to listen in to a dream conversation between a writer and those who knew him intimately.