My Favourite Swimming Books

These are some of my favourite books about swimming, swimmers and the writers who have reflected on swimming. 

Find A Way - Diana Nyad. Diana Nyad's life and what inspired her to try - again - to swim from Havana to Key West and succeed this time at the age of 64. Diana Nyad is one of my heroes. 

Waterlog - Roger Deakin. The eccentric Englishman's attempt to swim wild (in rivers, canals, loughs, lakes & seas) all over Britain. A classic of the genre. This book has serious longevity and a growing number of cult fans. I saw a German man reading it on a bus near Alice Springs a thousand miles from the nearest bit of Ocean. 

Hell And High Water - Sean Conway. An unemployed man living with his mum decides to swim nearly 1000 miles (in stages) from Land's End to John O'Groats and raise money for the charity War Child. 

Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer As Hero - Charles Sprawson. The best look at swimming through literature and attempting literary swims (the Hellespont, The Grand Canal etc.) Everyone should read this book even if they don't actually swim or like swimming because it's just so well written.  

Swimming to Antarctica - Lynne Cox. Maybe the greatest long distance swimmer of all time the amazing Lynne Cox recounts her adventures all over the world including, of course, swimming to Antrarctica. 

The Man Who Swam The Amazon - Martin Strehl. Another ordinary bloke who decided one day to swim the Amazon River. Why? Cause no one else had done it, of course. 

Swim: Why We Love The Water - Lynn Sher. Does what it says on the tin. A lovely book to have if you liked Sprawson's Black Masseur and want some more in a similar vein. Well researched and fun. 

The Swimmer - John Cheever. A classic. No point in buying this though. One of my alma maters (can you have more than one mater?) has put it online for nothing, here. 

The Swimmer As Hero

(a post from the blog's infancy)
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I had never heard of Charles Sprawson's Haunts of the Black Masseur - The Swimmer as Hero until I read a review of the book by JG Ballard in an essay collection. Ballard endorsed it so strongly that I ordered it immediately from Amazon.com. It is a cultural and literary history of swimming through the ages, enlived by Mr Sprawson's own swimming exploits: learning to swim as a boy in India, bathing at Pliny's house in Como, dodging Russian tankers as he attempts the Hellespont, lounging in the pools of Hollywood. Sprawson is one of those people who have read everything and he must have dozens of notebooks full of swimming references which he generously doles out for our amusement in lovely, streamlined prose. Byron gets his own chapter as do the Romans, Greeks and German romantics and many likely and unlikely figures in between. The book is charmingly illustrated and bound. It would be flawless but for the fact that it lacks an index. Though published by the small University of Minnesota Press it has been continually in print since 1993; so I would urge U Minn to hire an indexer for the next printing and if they don't Mr Sprawson should jump to Penguin or NYRB who would, I'm sure, love to have him on their lists. Charles Sprawson's interview with the BBC is miraculously still available here.