Having recently been given and immediately devoured whole a copy of his 1999 book, Waterlog, I have just obtained Deakin's 2007 sequel like volume, Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees, which I intend full to savour. A third book, Notes from Walnut Tree Farm, came out in 2008 and similarly to Wildwood, it too was published posthumously after his sad death in 2006.
This highlights a theme I have always been interested in: books which will not not be written. What would Alain-Fournier have produced to follow Le Grande Meaulnes had he not died on the Western Front, or Saki whose Reginald stories of high Edwardian satire evolved (The Square Egg and other Tales, etc.) in the light of the author's period in the trenches (where he died, his last words being quoted somewhere as: "Put that bloody cigarette out!")? Would Hillary have written something to compare with his only book, The Last Enemy, and could Saint-Exupery (Le Petit Prince) have gone back to writing had he not disappeared over the Med? Wildwood may turn out to fit into a "died too young" theme, which in turn may overlap for obvious reasons with a category of military autobiographical accounts, of which I am also rather fond (e.g. Sydney Jary's essential reading: 18 Platoon or anything by Milligoon).
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