My Family and Other Animals - Gerald Durrell

Gerald Durrell was born in Jamshedpur in India on January 7th, 1925. His father died when he was a child. My Family and Other Animals [MF&OA] (published in 1956) is his account of the five years his family spent living on the Greek island of Corfu in the 1930's. He was fascinated by natural history as a boy, as is readily apparent from the book. He started keeping creepy-crawlies in matchboxes when he was two years old, and when he was six he told his mother that he intended to own his own zoo, and that he would give her a cottage in the grounds to live in. He got a job as a keeper at Whipsnade Zoo in 1945, then frittered away an inheritance on ...

This is often regarded as Durrell's seminal work, but in so many ways, it really isn't his best. I, however, shall always be grateful to it (and the English Lit O level syllabus where I doscovered it!) for introducing me to the life and times of the now sadly-departed naturalist extraordinaire Gerald Durrell. My Family... tells the tale of Durrell's rather idyllic childhood on the Greek island of Corfu. The magic comes in the delightful, if at times whimsical, way in which he describes not only the animals and island, but all the people he encounters there. So idyllic did he make it all sound, in fact, that poor Durrell has been both credited and ...