The Durrells of Corfu – M.H.

The real story of the Durrell is as surprising and fascinating as anything in Gerry’s books, and Michael Haag, with his first hand knowledge of the family, is the ideal narrator, drawing on diaries, letters, and autobiographical fragments.

The Durrells of Corfu describes the family’s upbringing in India and the crisis that brought them to Greece. It recalls the genuine characters they encountered on Corfu – Theodore the biologist, the taxi river Spiro Halikiopoulos and the prisoner Kosti – as well as the visit of the novelist Henry Miller, And Haag has unearthed the storyof how the Durrellss left Corfu, including Margo’s and Larry’s last minute escapes before the war. An extended epilogue looks at the emergence of Larry as a world famous novelist, and Gerry as a naturalist, as well as the lives of the rest of the family, their friends and other animals.

The book illustrated with family photos from the Gerald Durrell Archive, many of them reproduced here for the first time.