Corfu or Kerkyra is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea, of the Ionian Islands, and, including its small satellite islands, forms the margin of the northwestern frontier of Greece. The island is part of the Corfu regional unit, and is administered by three municipalities with the islands of Othonoi, Ereikoussa, and Mathraki. The principal city of the island is also named Corfu. Corfu is home to the Ionian University.
Lawrence George Durrell was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer. He was the eldest brother of naturalist and writer Gerald Durrell.
Gerald Malcolm Durrell, was a British naturalist, writer, zookeeper, conservationist, and television presenter. He founded the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Jersey Zoo on the Channel Island of Jersey in 1959. He wrote approximately forty books, mainly about his life as an animal collector and enthusiast, the most famous being My Family and Other Animals (1956). Those memoirs of his family's years living in Greece were adapted into two television series and one television film. He was the youngest brother of novelist Lawrence Durrell.
My Family and Other Animals (1956) is an autobiographical book by British naturalist Gerald Durrell. It tells in an exaggerated and sometimes fictionalised way of the years that he lived as a child with his siblings and widowed mother on the Greek island of Corfu between 1935 and 1939. It describes the life of the Durrell family in a humorous manner, and explores the fauna of the island. It is the first and most well-known of Durrell's Corfu trilogy, which also includes Birds, Beasts, and Relatives (1969) and The Garden of the Gods (1978).
Lee McGeorge Durrell is an American naturalist, author, zookeeper, and television presenter. She is best known for her work at the Jersey Zoological Park in the British Channel Island of Jersey with her late husband, Gerald Durrell, and for co-authoring books with him.
Jacqueline Sonia Durrell is a British author. Born Jacquie Wolfenden, she married naturalist Gerald Durrell and worked alongside him for many years. She assisted him on several of his animal collecting expeditions, and with Jersey Zoo that he founded. The Durrells divorced in 1979.
Margaret Isabel Mabel "Margo" Durrell was the younger sister of novelist Lawrence Durrell and elder sister of naturalist, author, and TV presenter Gerald Durrell, who lampoons her character in his Corfu trilogy of novels: My Family and Other Animals, Birds, Beasts and Relatives, and The Garden of the Gods.
Lawrence Samuel Durrell was a British engineer, best remembered as the father of novelist Lawrence Durrell and naturalist and writer Gerald Durrell.
Simon Nye is an English screenwriter, best known for television comedy. He wrote the hit sitcom Men Behaving Badly, and all of the four ITV Pantos. He co-wrote the 2006 film Flushed Away, created an adaptation of Richmal Crompton's Just William books in 2010, and wrote the drama series The Durrells.
Louisa Florence Durrell, was an Anglo-Irish woman born in India during the British Raj. She was the mother of Lawrence and Gerald Durrell. She was featured in Gerald Durrell's autobiographical Corfu trilogy, which tells about the Durrells' years in Corfu from 1935 to 1939 in a somewhat fictionalized way.
Theodore Philip Stephanides was a Greek-British doctor and polymath, best remembered as the friend and mentor of Gerald Durrell. He was also known as a naturalist, biologist, astronomer, poet, writer and translator.
The Durrell family was an English family, two of whose members were best-selling writers. It has been the subject of several autobiographies, the TV series My Family and Other Animals (1987), the television film My Family and Other Animals (2005), the largely fictionalized TV series The Durrells (2016–2019), and the documentary What the Durrells Did Next.
Birds, Beasts, and Relatives (1969) by British naturalist Gerald Durrell is the second volume of his autobiographical Corfu trilogy, published from 1954 to 1978. The trilogy are memoirs about his childhood with his family between 1935 and 1939, when they lived on the Greek island of Corfu.
The Garden of the Gods is a 1978 autobiographical book by British naturalist and author Gerald Durrell (1925–1995). It is the third book in his autobiographical Corfu trilogy, following My Family and Other Animals and Birds, Beasts, and Relatives.
My Family and Other Animals is a 2005 television film written by Simon Nye and directed by Sheree Folkson. The film is based on the 1956 autobiographical book of the same title written by Gerald Durrell, in which he describes a series of anecdotes relating to his family's stay on Corfu from 1935–1939, when he was aged 10–14.
Christopher John Hall is an English television producer. He has produced dramas primarily for the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4 networks, and worked for major British production companies, including Kudos, Carnival Films, Hat Trick Productions, World Productions and Tiger Aspect Productions.
Richard Leslie Beswetherick Pine is the author of critical works on the Irish playwright Brian Friel, the Anglo-Irish novelist Lawrence Durrell, and aspects of art music in Ireland. He worked for the Irish national broadcaster RTÉ Raidió Teilifís Éireann before moving to Greece in 2001 to found the Durrell School of Corfu, which he directed until 2010. From 2009 to 2020 he wrote a regular column on Greek affairs in The Irish Times and was also an obituarist for The Guardian.
The Durrells is a British comedy-drama television series loosely based on Gerald Durrell's three autobiographical books about his family's four years (1935–1939) on the Greek island of Corfu. It aired on ITV from 3 April 2016 to 12 May 2019. The series is written by Simon Nye, directed by Steve Barron and Roger Goldby, and produced by Christopher Hall. Lee Durrell, Gerald Durrell's widow and director of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, acted as consultant. The series was partly filmed on location in Corfu, as well as at Ealing Studios and Twickenham Studios in London.
Lake Antiniotissa or Antinioti, sometimes known as Antinioti Lagoon, is a small brackish lake on the north-east coast of Corfu, Greece near Agios Spyridon beach. It is an important wetland area and lies within a Natura 2000 nature protection area of 188 hectares at the western edge of the municipal unit of Thinali. The lake's Greek name translates into English as "the enemy of youth". It was once a malarial swamp and home to the anopheles mosquito, resulting in the area being uninhabited for many centuries, and it is still comparatively undeveloped. The vegetation surrounding the lake includes thickets of reed and bamboo. Inland there are orchards, olive groves and farmland, while between the lake and the sea lie sand dunes. The lake is jointly owned by the twelve principal villages of north-eastern Corfu and leased for fish farming, producing flathead grey mullet, sea bass and eel. It is also used for duck hunting. The adjacent dunes are home to the sand lily and the agile frog. The lake as it was in the 1930s was described by the British naturalist Gerald Durrell in his childhood autobiography My Family and Other Animals, in which it was called the "Lake of Lillies". Durrell wrote that:
it was a mile long, an elongated sheet of shallow water surrounded by a thick mane of cane and reed, and separated from the sea at one end by a wide, gently curving dune of white sand… It was the only place on the island where those sand lilies grew, strange misshapen bulbs buried in the sand, that once a year sent up thick green leaves and white flowers above the surface, so that the dune became a glacier of flowers.
My Family and Other Animals is a 1987 British TV mini-series produced by the BBC and directed by Peter Barber-Fleming. It is based on Gerald Durrell's autobiographical book by the same name, My Family and Other Animals, which tells about the time his family spent on the Greek Island of Corfu in 1935–1939. The series consists of 10 episodes and was aired for the first time between 17 October and 19 December 1987.
