Books with title Durrell: My Family and Other Animals

My Family and Other Animals is the bewitching account of a rare and magical childhood on the island of Corfu by treasured British conservationist Gerald Durrell. This tv tie in edition coincides with ITV's six part television series The Durrells. Escaping the ills of the British climate, the Durrell family - acne-ridden Margo, gun-toting Leslie, bookworm Lawrence and budding naturalist Gerry, along with their long-suffering mother and Roger the dog - take off for the island of Corfu. But the Durrells find that, reluctantly, they must share their various villas with a menagerie of local fauna - among them scorpions, geckos, toads, bats and butterflies. Recounted with immense humour and charm My Family and Other Animals is a wonderful account of a rare, magical childhood. 'Durrell has an uncanny knack of discovering human as well as animal eccentricities' Sunday Telegraph 'A bewitching book' Sunday Times

When the Durrell family can no longer endure the damp, gray English climate, they do what any sensible family would do: sell their house and relocate to the sun-soaked Greek island of Corfu. Through glorious silver-and-green olive groves and across brilliant tusk-white beaches, ten-year-old Gerry, the youngest of the four Durrell children, pursues his interest in natural history with a joyful passion, revealing the engrossing hidden world of the island's fauna. Many hilarious mishaps ensue as each of Gerry's new animal friends is installed in the family villa. Water snakes recuperate from heat stroke in the bathtub, matchboxes are filled with scorpions, and a pair of rowdy magpies make short order of everything from elaborate dinner spreads to Lawrence's prized manuscript to the patience of the family puppies, Widdle and Puke. Toads and tortoises, bats and butterflies, scorpions and geckos, ladybugs, praying mantises, octopuses, pigeons, and gulls are only some of the animals lovingly described in Durrell's classic tale of his childhood island home.

Soaked in the sunshine of Corfu, where Gerald Durrell lived as a boy with his "family and other animals," this book evocatively chronicles his five-year sojourn on the Greek island. With hilarious yet endearing portraits of his eccentric family and their many unusual hangers-on, My Family and Other Animals also captures the beginnings of Durrell's lifelong love of animals. In its passionate understanding of Corfu's natural history, this is an entertaining and enduring memoir.

The book is an autobiographical account of five years in the childhood of naturalist Gerald Durrell, age 10 at the start of the saga, of his family, pets and life during a sojourn on the island of Corfu. The book is divided into three sections, marking the three villas where the family lived on the island. Gerald is the youngest in a family consisting of their widowed mother, the eldest son Larry, the gun-mad Leslie, and diet-obsessed sister Margo together with Roger the dog. They are fiercely protected by their taxi-driver friend Spiro (Spiros "Americano" Halikiopoulos) and mentored by the polymath Dr. Theodore Stephanides who provides Gerald with his education in natural history. Other human characters, chiefly eccentric, include Gerald's private tutors, the artistic and literary visitors Larry invites to stay, and the local people who befriend the family. (from Wikipedia)