Deakin was a founder director of the arts and environmental charity Common Ground in 1982. Among his environmental causes, he worked to preserve woodland, ancient rights of way and coppicing techniques of Suffolk hedgerows. [3] Bibliography [ edit ] Deakin first worked in advertising as a copywriter and creative director for Colman Prentis and Varley, while living in Bayswater, London. He was responsible for the National Coal Board slogan "Come home to a real fire". Following this, he taught French and English at Diss Grammar School for three years. [1] [3] From a distance at least, Deakin lived every writer’s fantasy after working as a teacher, environmental campaigner and film-maker. Nursing a self-declared weakness for sheds, he would periodically abandon his house to sleep and write in a shepherd’s hut he rescued in 1980 (where original thinkers begin, David Cameron and the rest of us follow) and a railway wagon. “There’s more truth about a camp than a house,” he wrote. It better represents a human life, he thought: we desire permanency but in reality are just passing through. The wagon has a double bed and is decorated by the current owner, an artist He is survived by his partner Alison Hastie and his son. [1] His archive has been given to the University of East Anglia, including writings on ancient trees, along with film banks, photographs, journals and Deakin's swimming trunks. [2] The nature writer Robert Macfarlane was Deakin's literary executor. He commented:

He left Diss Grammar School in 1978 to join the staff of Friends of the Earth (1978-82) planning campaigns, editing and co-writing publications, and managing press relations and media strategy. The first major campaign he was closely involved in planning from the beginning was the campaign to save whales. In 1980 he successfully campaigned to save Cowpasture Lane, part of an ancient Suffolk droving road, from destruction by agribusiness. The campaign, a key issue relating to the future of hedgerows in the debate on the Wildlife & Countryside Bill, and its success is documented as a chapter in Des Wilson’s “Citizen Action”, and in Common Ground’s “Holding Your Ground”, as well as “Hansard”. At the time of his death he had just completed Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees, to be published in 2007. He had travelled in many countries - though particularly in those of the former eastern bloc - investigating the plight of ancient woodlands and forests.

Summary

Over our first few years at Walnut Tree Farm, we found that most of the jobs that needed doing around the place entailed an unspoken dialogue with Roger,” says Titus in Life at Walnut Tree Farm, a new pictorial biography of the place he has written with Rufus Deakin. Roger Deakin died 13 years ago at the age of 63 Life at Walnut Tree Farm, the beautifully presented book by Rufus Deakin, Roger’s son, and Titus Rowlandson, one of the current owners, offers an insider’s glimpse into the evolving story of the farm and the land, which was the seat of Roger’s creativity and a world he wrote about so vividly. In the beginning, I assumed that not having met Roger would bequeath me a crisp, neutral gaze. Later, I craved five minutes in his company. His education taught him how to reason but he chose to live as a romantic – by following his feelings. I wanted to feel that innate sympathy that comes from sharing a space with another living being. At least Roger and I shared the same sky: we loved the same woods, winds and moods. I discovered that he had moved his mum into a cottage in the Suffolk town of Eye in the 1990s, just when my dad moved to another cottage 50 yards away. Roger and I were regular visitors to our parents. Surely we both stood in the queue in Eye greengrocers one Saturday morning.

With EAFA’s specialist knowledge in film and it being owned and operated by UEA, EAFA was the obvious home for RD’s film-making archive and film collection. This part of the collection was transferred to EAFA in December 2009. During this period (1983), RD also became a founder-director, with Angela King and Sue Clifford, of Common Ground, the arts/environmental charity. He helped create a distinctive house style for Common Ground.Where it was located was one of the largest common grazing areas in the UK at the time. Deakin slowly changed the landscape, planting trees, draining and clearing the moat, and letting the land be used in a sustainable way. He had the odd run-in with neighbours, in particular over Cowpasture Lane, but this place was to motivate him in many ways. His regular swims in the moat became the book Waterlog, the love of the landscape around was key to the creation of Common Ground and because of his work in the environmental business meant that he had a light touch on the land around his home. Rufus can also be used to compute the MD5, SHA-1 and SHA-256 hashes of the currently selected image. When fans come, they’re often allowed to wander around the farm by its current owners, Jasmin Moss and Titus Rowlandson, who are childhood friends of Deakin’s son, Rufus. For much of their 12-year residency, the couple have lived with the reverberations of their famous predecessor – “Rog” as Titus calls him. As well as the cottage, Deakin restored a shepherd’s hut (now available as a holiday rental). Some projects, including restoring old railway carriages, were abandoned in favour of whatever took his current attention. The land surrounding the cottage is littered with old vehicles and building materials that nature slowly reclaimed. Roger Deakin (1943-2006) went to Haberdashers' Aske's School in Hampstead, then Peterhouse, Cambridge, (1961-64) where he took an English BA under the supervision of Kingsley Amis. He then became an advertising copywriter, working for half-a-dozen of the major London agencies.