My Family and Other Animals

Britain’s greatest masterpieces

- Gerald Durrell

IN an interview in 2016, Lee McGeorge Durrell expressed concern that school-children had never heard of her late husband’s pioneering conservation work, let alone read his classic My Family and Other Animals. The interview came just as the book, and its Corfu-based sequels Birds, Beasts and Relatives and The Garden of the Gods, underwent a loose television adaptation, The Durrells. The hope was that it would stimulate interest in Gerald Durrell’s ongoing legacy at the Jersey Zoo, established in 1959 to act as a reserve and to undertake breeding programmes for endangered species.

Durrell had been captivated by Nature from an early age and My Family and Other Animals, first published in 1956, is an expression of the joys of his childhood and his receptiveness to the adventures and wonderment to be found in the great outdoors. The tale is based around a four-year stay on the island of Corfu in the late 1930s, which began when Durrell was 10.

The Durrell herd, led by their widowed mother Louisa, have left the leaden skies of Bournemouth in search of sunshine, ‘like a flock of migrating swallows’. Gerald (Gerry) is the youngest of four siblings, the others include the bookish Larry (Lawrence Durrell, the accomplished novelist, poet and travel writer), already an adult; Margo, with her acne potions and slimming guides; and Leslie, with his revolvers and ‘air of quiet belligerence’. Also along for the fun is Roger, the big black family dog and companion on many of Gerry’s escapades.