Seeing off six monarchs

This beguiling little book, nostalgically illustrated with faded family snapshots, describes the long and arduous life of a tortoise who died earlier this year at Powderham Castle near Exeter, aged 160. According to the blurb, Timothy survived six monarchs, two world wars and many generations of the family who looked after him.

The story that unfolds is one of the most deceptively sentimental and carefully contrived I have ever read. It chiefly concerns not so much the tortoise as the ups and downs of the Earls of Devon, family name Courtenay, and their successful fight to keep Powderham Castle and its estate going through thick and thin. The reptile quietly residing all along in the castle’s rose garden is sometimes dragged into the story by the skin of its teeth.

He is also given a highly fanciful range of human attributes. He is ‘an innocent in a changing world’. He displays ‘quiet courage’. He is ‘a real character’, ‘a fearless little chap’ and ‘a very independent soul’. He could, says a guide at the castle, ‘give you such a look’, and at the end of his life he was even falsely rumoured to have taken exception to a visit from Sir Elton John. In fact, of course, we know nothing at all about Timothy other than that he was, through no fault of his own, simply a tortoise.

And a big one, too. The author tells us that Timothy was ‘the size of a hassock’ and had ‘the calming density of a medium-sized Le Creuset pot’. He fed greedily off rose petals, dandelions (flowers and leaves), strawberries, melon and lettuce and, on one occasion, swallowed a gooseberry which had to be extracted from his throat with one of her ladyship’s hatpins.