The World of Minack by Derek Tangye

The World of Minack offers us a rare insight into the lives of a devoted couple over the course of more than 40 years.  Despite the necessary limitations of this book , one can't help but get wrapped up in their story because, given a different inflection, it would be our own: hopes and fears, triumphs and defeats, joys and sadness, and change and loss. 

In 1949, Derek Tangye and his wife Jeannie decided to make a sea-change.  They gave up well-paid jobs in London and moved to Cornwall, taking up a tenancy in a clifftop property called Dorminack (which they shortened to Minack).  Here, they made a living growing early season daffodils and potatoes.

In 1961, Derek published A Gull on the Roof, the first of The Minack Chronicles, a series of twenty books detailing their life on a small holding. He continued to publish a new book in the series every two years or so until his death in 1996.

The World of Minack is a collection of excerpts from the first seventeen books, with a separate chapter dedicated to each of these volumes; therefore, we follow the Tangyes (mostly in chronological order) from World War Two until Jeannie's death in 1986.

The excerpts in this book deal mostly with the Tangye's menagerie of animals: the cats Monty, Lama, Oliver, Ambrose and Cherry; Boris the muscovy drake; the donkeys Penny, Fred and Merlin; and a gull called Hubert.  The tales about  these animals are interspersed with descriptions of the land, sea and weather, Derek's philosophical musings on life in the countryside, details of the trails and tribulations of flower farming, and brief accounts of some of the people they met throughout the years.

I had intended to read the series from beginning to end, having already read some in the 1980s.  Alas, that is never going to happen, so I opted to read the expurgated version in the form of this book.  It is a trade-off.  By making this decision, I have saved time at the expense of depth and detail.  Tangye's selections give the lion's share of the narrative to their pets and the least share to the people they met.  The descriptions of the weather tended to be repetitive without adding to the narrative.  Oh well, we all have our druthers: for myself, I would have liked less weather and more people.

Even so, The World of Minack is engaging and stirring.