Remembering Gerald Durrell

Born today: Gerald Durrell January 7, 1925, died January 30, 1995.

It was my older brother who first introduced me to Gerald Durrell in the form of the book, 'My Family and Other Animals'. This was when our family were still living in the bushveld in South Africa in the early '70's, when I was about 10 years of age. The book described the life of the Durrell family during their stay on the Greek island of Corfu in the years preceding the Second World War. My brother, no naturalist, found the antics of the Durrell family hilarious; but my interest was in Gerald and his boy-hood fascination with collecting and observing wildlife. Finally here was someone I could relate to.

Libraries were important to me in those days - there was no TV in the country at all. My reading was fairly ordinary, restricted to what was available at the school library in Aloe Ridge Primary School. Books remembered are those by Jacques Cousteau (the first of my 'mentors-by-book'), the 'Adventure' series by Willard Price, the 'Just William' series and, of course, the Hardy Boys. After reading My Family, I soon moved on to the many books about his zoo collecting expeditions and his work at the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust. Later, when back in Canada, we saw episodes of his series The Stationary Ark and Durrell in Russia, on TV. Whether in his books of his documentaries, he always seemed to be able to see the humor in even the worst situations and the characters he came across in his adventures were always described with zest. He was quite an inspiration to me at the time.

Here, a scene from the movie, My Family and Other Animals (1989). Glimpses of his eccentric family, his irregular education, Roger the dog, a scene with the Rose-beetle man, his first tortoise and some pleasant views of Margo Corfu. (Try to ignore the music).