Durrell family

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The Durrell family lived in India and Corfu, among other places, during the first half of the twentieth century. Their lives and travels were documented and made famous through their autobiographical writings, particularly by Lawrence and Gerald. Other members of the family became notable in their own right. 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 were based on these writings.

Lawrence Samuel Durrell, Louisa Durrell and their children were all born in India during the British Raj (the Durrell children were in fact fourth-generation settlers in India, their paternal grandmother Dora Johnstone and maternal grandfather George Dixie having also been born on the sub-continent).

Following Lawrence Samuel Durrell's death in 1928, Louisa Durrell and her three surviving younger children moved to the United Kingdom, where Lawrence had already been sent to be educated. In 1935, the Durrells moved to the Greek island of Corfu. They remained there until the summer of 1939, when the impending outbreak of World War II forced most of them to return to England. Gerald's autobiographical Corfu trilogy and several short stories give a somewhat fictionalised account the family's time in Corfu, while Lawrence's Prospero's Cell, A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corcyra (1945) is assembled from his diaries and notebooks, mainly for the years 1937 and 1938.

Family members

The family was founded by:

Their children were:

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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.

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<i>My Family and Other Animals</i> (TV series) British TV series or programme

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.

References

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  4. Samuel Amos Durrell, registered at birth as Samuel Stearn Durrell, was the son of Suffolk farmer Samuel Stearn, with whom his mother, Mahala Durrell née Tye, had a relationship after her husband, William Durrell, committed suicide. See Douglas Botting, Gerald Durrell, The Authorised Biography (London: Harper Collins, 1999), p. 6.
  5. Botting, p. 4.
  6. Gordon Bowker, Through the Dark Labyrinth, A Biography of Lawrence Durrell (New York: St Martin's Press, 1997) p. 5.
  7. Botting, p. 4.
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  33. Whatever Happened to Margo?, pp.18–19.
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  42. Langley, "The Other Mr Durrell".
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  51. Botting, p. 512. It was out of character for Margo not to be there. Botting implies, but does not say excplicitly, that she may have been prevented from attending by ill-health.
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