 The couple had given up sophisticated metropolitan lives, he as a newspaper columnist (during the war years he had worked for MI5) and she as a hotel PR executive, to live in isolation in a simple cottage surrounded by their beloved animals, which featured in nearly all his works.He had two older brothers Nigel Tangye who was also an author and Colin Tangye, a Lloyds Underwriter.Their father was , in turn the son of the engineer Richard Tangye.