His series of books, ‘The Minack Chronicles’, about his simple life on a clifftop daffodil farm called Dorminack, but known as Minack, with his wife Jeannie (Jean Everald Nicol) who are both pictured left..

The son of the engineer, Sir Richard Trevithick Tangye (November 24^th), Derek Tangye had two older brothers one of whom, Nigel Tangye, was also a writer.

Following war service with MI5, Tangye became a newspaper columnist while his wife worked in public relations.  The first of ‘The Minack Chronicles’ was ‘A Gull on the Roof ’ (1961) and a further 18 volumes were published on a roughly bi-annual basis.  Although most books detailed his life in Cornwall, one book ‘A Cottage on a Cliff ’ also records details of Tangye’s career with MI5.