The Durrell family lived in India, Corfu, England and other places during the twentieth century. Their lives and travels were documented and made famous through their autobiographical writings, particularly those 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 of 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.
The family was founded by:
Their children were:
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).
Patience Cooper was an Anglo-Indian actress, and one of the early superstars of Bollywood. She was the daughter of Phoebe Stella Gamble (born in Calcutta in 1881; daughter of John Frederick Gamble and Phoebe Stella Clement whose mother was Armenian and James Alfred Cooper. An Anglo-Indian born in Howrah, West Bengal, and baptised on 30 May 1905, Cooper had a successful career in both silent and sound films. She is credited with the first double roles of Indian cinema—as twin sisters in Patni Prataap and as mother and daughter in Kashmiri Sundari, even though earlier in 1917, actor Anna Salunke had played roles of both the male lead character Ram and the female lead character Seeta in the film Lanka Dahan.
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.
Alan Gradon Thomas, was an English bibliophile. He was both a friend of Lawrence Durrell and scholar of his works. After Durrell's death, Thomas donated a significant collection of books, journals and other materials of or pertaining to Durrell to the British Library. This is maintained as the Lawrence Durrell Collection.
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.
Louisa Florence Durrell, was a British 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.
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.
Alfred William Begbie (1801–1873) was a British civil servant in India.
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. Since 2009 he has written a regular column on Greek affairs in The Irish Times and is 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.
James William Grant FRSE FRAS, 3rd Laird of Wester Elchies (1788–1865) was a Scottish astronomer and landowner. On 23 July 1844 he was the first person to observe and record the existence of the star Antares B.
Herbert John Reynolds (1832-1916) was a member of the Indian Civil Service and the Legislative Council of Bengal. He was vice-chancellor of Calcutta University and president of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1883.
Dirom Grey Crawford was an Indian-born British physician and officer of the Indian Medical Service (IMS). He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel before retiring in 1911 and returning to serve on hospital ships during the First World War when he was mentioned in dispatches. He wrote a history of the IMS as well as the roll of its members which included biographical details of 6,156 of its officers.
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.