A Gull on the Roof by Derek Tangye

How many of us living in large cities, doing jobs we don't like, have had dreams of leaving it all behind and moving to the country? Or how about living in a cottage on a cliff overlooking the sea and growing food and flowers?  

That is exactly what Derek Tangye and his wife Jeannie did in the 1950s when they moved from London to Cornwall.  Turning their backs on paid employment and a lifestyle that saw them rubbing shoulders with the likes of Danny Kaye and Gertrude Lawrence, they (along with their beloved ginger cat Monty) moved into a derelict cottage on six acres of land.  Their challenge: to make their living as market gardeners.  A Gull on the Roof is the tale of what they did and what happened to them in the first five years on their farm at Minack, near St Buryan.

Tangye's story is a pleasing mixture of human interactions, wild landscapes and the secret world of animals.  On the human side, there are the disbelieving friends in London, the practical and flawed people of the districts around St Buryan; and caught in the middle are the Tangyes, who risk making complete fools of themselves in the eyes of both groups should their dream turn into a failure.  On the animal side, there is Monty and his country cousins: foxes, badgers, robins and finches.  And the wild coast of Cornwall and its boisterous weather provide equal measures of beauty and peril.

Tangye, in addition to being a perceptive judge of character, is capable of turning a phrase.  There are many places in the book were he describes his thoughts and feelings about the very unorthodox thing he and Jeannie have chosen to do.  He often compares it to their old life in London.  A brief visit to his friends in London provoked the following:

There is no freedom in twentieth-century achievement for the individual is  controlled not by his own deep thinking processes but by the plankton of shibboleths which are currently in fleeting fashion; and by his [sic] own desperate need to maintain financial survival in the glittering world he has found himself. 

I wonder what he would have made of the twenty-first century?  

Anyway, if you like James Herriot, then you will probably enjoy Derek Tangye too.

J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century by Tom Shippey

Set a thief to catch a thief. Better still, set a philologist to catch a philologist. That is exactly what we get in Professor Tom Shippey's J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. 

Shippey, like Tolkien, has taught English Language at both Oxford and Leeds universities.  As such, he is very qualified to write an extended study of Tolkien's literary output, and of the popular and professional criticism it has attracted.

This book contains chapters which deal with The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings (three chapters, naturally), The Silmarillion, and his shorter works.

Shippey approaches each work differently so that the reader is introduced incrementally and gently to the complexity of the cultural heritage, scholarship and religious thought that underlies Tolkien's work.  And we couldn't ask for a better guide.  Shippey knows his terrain, and he takes the reader through this literary and philological landscape by a most illuminating and varied route.  

Shippey's prose is plain but never boring.  In fact, it is so entertaining, witty and congenial that the reader can easily forget the depth and scope of the learning that lies behind it. I am reminded of a passage in The Lord of the Rings. Saruman, trapped in the tower of Orthanc, has just spoken to Gandalf, Theoden and those who accompanied them to Isengard.  We are told:

Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves.

I mean it kindly. Having read this book, I do feel just that little bit wiser and certainly a lot more informed about Tolkien and his works.

I read the 2001 edition published by HarperCollins

The Power-House by John Buchan

Looking for a quick read on a rainy afternoon?  Then The Power-House by John Buchan may be just the thing. 

First published in Blackwood's Magazine in 1913, The Power-House became a favourite of the British soldiers during the First World War.  Short - it is about 100 pages long - it could be read in what little time the soldiers had to themselves.

Sir Edward Leithen, a lawyer and politician, lives in London.  He spends his usually uneventful days shuttling between home, work and his gentlemen's club.  

Nothing exciting happens to him until one day his wealthy friend disappears, leaving behind an incomplete letter hinting at great danger.  A second friend goes to Russia in search of him, and Leithen is left behind to look after things in their absence.  He regrets that he is not the one having the adventure, but he need not worry on that account: adventure comes looking for him in England, and soon Leithen is running for his life.  The future of Western civilization is in his hands, if he can only stay alive long enough.

As is usual with a Buchan story, the action starts almost immediately and does not let off from its break-neck speed until the final climax.  As we have come to expect, Buchan's prose style is beautifully descriptive and evocative without ever being in danger of becoming overblown.  Of course, there are gaping holes in the plot, and coincidences that strain credulity; however, these are all part and parcel of Buchan's style, and if the reader accepts them in the spirit they are given, then a rollicking good time is assured.

The Power-House is the first of the Sir Edward Leithen novels.  While it doesn't have the good-humoured charm of John Macnab, the second in the series, it does have the punch and vivacity of The Thirty-nine Steps, the first of the Richard Hannay novels.  And I look forward to reading the third in the series.

I read the 2007 edition published by Polygon Books.