A cottage in Cornwall

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32494, 2 January 1971, Page 10

A cottage in Cornwall

A Cornish Summer. By Derek Tangye. Michael Joseph. 189 pp. Illustrated.

“Derek Tangye. St Buryan, Penzance. Tomatoes Grown for Flavour,” runs the roadside sign at the gate of Derek and Jean Tangye’s small Cornish farm. Derek Tangye is probably best known for his first book, “A Gull On The Roof.” This latest book is not about any one particular animal, but simply records, in characteristically nostalgic manner, memorable bits of several summers in Cornwall. The chapters are headed by sketches by Mr Tangye’s wife Jeannie. “When did it happen? Three, five, 10 summers ago? Incidents merge into each other leaving timeless intervals. I do not remember the summer when the drought dried up Monty’s Leap, or the summer when I killed an adder outside our door, or the summer when a hoopoe paraded on the grass in front of our cottage ...” and so on. Inevitably, however, he does remember some summers very well, and tells us about them in what seems to be more or less chronological order.

Mr Tangye tells us of the crucial summer when he and his wife, both working in high-powered government jobs in London, visited Cornwall and determined to try to live there, to make a simple living from growing flowers and fruit. We hear the troubles they had to get their dream cottage, and the financial problems of flowerfarming. We hear about their animals, familiar to readers of previous books, their cats, birds, donkeys, and the wild animals which visited them, We go with them to the Scillies, to an unconventional christening, and to a gala which the author and his wife and their donkeys had been invited to open. The delights and misadventures of looking after animals are faithfully

chronicled. This book, however, tells of a new problem in the author’s life—the problem of success. The simple life in the Cornish cottage is interrupted every day of the summer by autographhunters and fellow animal-lovers eager to swap stories. The price of fame, however, is not too dear, and the Tangyes feel an obligation to stay at home so as not to disappoint the readers of the books. Indeed, they are glad to make many new friends among the visitors.

Mr Tangye’s style is in general pleasant and unobtrusive; but occasionally he is apt to strike a whimsical note, as if in challenge to Godfrey Winn: “We stood there and watched, then away the cuckoos went, flying south. ‘Jeanie!’ I had called, in a fit of sadness as they took off ‘hold on to their tails!’ And we both laughed at my nonsense.” This mawkishness '■poils the book.