This wonderful autobiography — the first of many and now re-published for the first time in many years — is not just a book about one home in Cornwall, but a loving testament to Cornwall itself, its picturesque fishing ports, delightful country pubs, lonely moors, majestic cliffs, glorious sandy beaches, ancient customs, memorable festivals, colourful carnivals, with especially vivid descriptions of the unconventional world of the artists, writers, craftsmen and women, who settled in England’s most westerly county. It is also an amusing account of the author's ill-fated literary adventure: The Cornish Review.
But above all else, this is a book which gives a disarmingly frank account of the vagaries of life as experienced by a professional author whose fingers can hardly type fast enough to earn a living for himself, his wife, and their six children, in that long ago pre-Beatles era of the Austin A40, the Dansette record player, Alma Cogan, and — not least — Pounds, Shillings, and Pence.
Sometimes the income from Denys’ writing was just not enough to make ends meet, and various attempts were made to generate more income by hazardous — and often hilarious — ventures into woodchopping, violet growing, pottery, and straightforward 'hocking' of anything from treasured family heirlooms to old carpets. As the author said in a 1962 interview: “The Sea’s in the Kitchen is as much a book about Cornwall in my life as about my life in Cornwall.”