Gerald Durrell was born in India in 1925. His family settled on Corfu when he was a boy and he spent his time studying its wildlife. He relates these experiences in the trilogy beginning with My Family and Other Animals, and continuing with Birds, Beasts and Relatives and The Garden of the Gods. He writes with wry humour and great perception about both the humans and the animals he meets.

On leaving Corfu, Durrell returned to England to work at Whipsnade Park as a student keeper. His adventures there are told with characteristic energy in Beasts in My Belfry. A few years later, he began organizing his own animal-collecting expeditions. The first, to the Cameroons, was followed by expeditions to Paraguay, Argentina and Sierra Leone. He recounts these experiences in a number of books including The Drunken Forest. He also visited many countries while shooting various television series.

In 1959 Durrell realized a lifelong dream when he set up the Jersey Zoological Park, followed a few years later by the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust, renamed the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust in 1999.

Whether in a factual account of an expedition or a work of non-fiction, Durrell’s style is exuberant, passionate and acutely observed. Gerald Durrell died in 1995.

Rosy, the elephant bequeathed to young Adrian Rookwhistle by a reprobate relative, turns out to be a handful; not only because of her size but also because of her fondness for strong drink. To Adrian she represents the chance to get away from a city shop and a suburban lodging by exploiting her theatrical talent and experience. To Rosy their progress towards the gayer South Coast resorts offers undreamed-of opportunities for drink and destruction.

So the Monkspepper Hunt is driven to delirium and Lady Fenneltree’s stately home reduced to a shambles. In due course the constabulary catches up with the pair, whose ensuing trial is a triumph of the law and of Rosy’s enormous charm. The verdict is—but then the story has to be read to be believed, if then.

In spite of all this the author firmly maintains that his first novel is entirely credible, further that it is “an almost true story”!

Gerald Durrell (1925–95) moved from England to Corfu with his family when he was eight. He immediately became fascinated by the island’s natural history and spent much of his time studying the local wildlife and keeping numerous, and often unusual, pets. He grew up to be a famous naturalist, animal-collector, and conservationist.

Durrell dedicated his life to the conservation of wildlife and it is through his efforts that creatures such as the Mauritius pink pigeon and the Mallorcan midwife toad have avoided extinction. Over his lifetime he wrote thirty-seven books, went on dozens of animal-collecting trips and presented numerous tv shows. He founded the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust in 1959 as a centre for the conservation of endangered species – of which his wife Lee is still Honorary Director. He was awarded the OBE in 1982.

My Family and Other Animals

Birds, Beasts, and Relatives

The Garden of the Gods

Gerald Durrell's adventurous spirit and his spontaneous gift for narrative and anecdote mark him as a rare bird indeed.

In The Bafut Beagles he describes a collecting expedition to the Cameroons, where, with the assistance of a pack of African enthusiasts and mongrel dogs, he captured almost everything from flying mice to booming squirrels. The unconscious humour of a supercilious toad or a hypocritical chimpanzee is only surpassed by the electric charm of the convivial Fon of Bafut himself.

There are not many travel books with a more natural sense of humour.

The story of a six months’ collecting trip made by Gerald Durrell and John Yealland to the great rain forests of the Cameroons in West Africa to bring back alive some of the fascinating animals, birds, and reptiles of the region and to see one of the few parts of Africa that remained as it had been when the continent was first discovered.

. . a book of immense charm. The author handles English prose with the same firmness and discretion that he used to dispense towards the pangolins and lemuroids that fell to his snares and huntsmen in the Cameroons. How seldom it is that books of this kind are written by those who can write! . . . a genuinely amusing writer.” —

“. . . I hail a happy book out of Africa . . . and one amusing in its own right . . . I can think of no more wholesomely escapist experience than travelling for an all-too-brief spell in Mr Durrell’s overloaded ark. No wonder it is a Book Society choice.” —

“. . . He has a gift both of enjoyment and of description, and writes vividly and well.” —

This lively story with a Greek island setting tells how Amanda and David plot to outwit the unpleasant local mayor and help their Greek friend, Yani. The villagers, and especially the mayor, depend on their donkeys for transport. If the children are to blackmail them successfully the donkeys must disappear. And disappear they do, to the consternation of the whole village . . .

“. . . a rarity. Gerald Durrell has written a comedy that should be welcomed by readers of all sorts and sizes.”

The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell

After some especially taxing missions, seasoned secret agent Methuen wants nothing more than to take a long, relaxing fishing trip. But after a fellow British spy is killed in the remote mountains of Serbia, Methuen is called back into action. What follows is a suspenseful tale of espionage told with Lawrence Durrell’s characteristic panache. Methuen sets up camp in the Serbian countryside and baits his hooks, hoping to draw out the men responsible for the murder. It’s not long before Methuen realizes that he’s in a fight for his own life against an unknown opponent. Are his true enemies the Communists, the royalist rebel White Eagles. . or someone more sinister?

A group of English cruise-ship tourists debark to visit the isle of Crete’s famed labyrinth, the City in the Rock. The motley gathering includes a painter, a poet, a soldier, an elderly married couple, a medium, a convalescent girl, and the mysterious Lord Gracean. The group is prepared for a trifling day of sightseeing and maybe even a glimpse of the legendary Minotaur, but instead is suddenly stuck in a nightmare when a rockslide traps them deep within the labyrinth. Who among the passengers will make it out alive? And for those who emerge, will anything ever be the same?