theodore stephanides my family and other animals

Writing was an occupation to which Durrell devoted much of his life, producing a total of nearly 40 books, most of them autobiographical, along with several works for children. The time that Durrell spent in Greece with his family served as inspiration for some of his best-known works. The books have been made into films and television series several times, with notable success. But Gerald himself assured us that most of what is narrated is true.

The books contain a certain degree of fiction for example, his brother Lawrence-who was to become one of the most celebrated British authors of the 20th century, notably with his tetralogy The Alexandria Quartet -did not live with the rest of the family, but in another house with his wife Nancy, who is never mentioned.

Years later, Gerald would capture those experiences in My Family and Other Animals (1956), Bugs and Other Relatives (1969) and The Garden of the Gods (1978). While Gerald filled the house with animals, his mother tried to provide for her children with limited resources and in a country whose language none of them spoke.Īll in all, it was a happy four years until 1939, when the outbreak of World War II, with Greece under the domination of the Axis powers, forced the Durrells to leave Corfu. There, the 10-year-old Gerry was able to give free rein to his vocation as a naturalist under the teachings of the physician and scientist Theodore Stephanides, who befriended the family. The family then opted for a radical departure, emigrating in search of a cheaper place, and Corfu was the destination. Although, as he also confessed in that interview, his favourite animal was his wife.īorn in the Indian city of Jamshedpur under British rule, his engineer father died prematurely, leaving his widow and four children in an untenable financial position in Britain at the time. And few books like his have spread the love of animals that was his life’s passion. Through his loosely autobiographical novels, especially the trilogy about his childhood years on the Greek island of Corfu, he has delighted millions of readers with his fresh, humorous and tender prose. He wanted his own zoo and he eventually got one, where he undertook valuable work in breeding endangered species, a model for many other conservation institutions.īut Durrell was something more: he was his own person. If what his mother Louisa told him was true, few lives have had such a clearly defined object from the start as that of Gerald Durrell ( 7 January 1925 – 30 January 1995).

The first word he uttered in his life was not “mum” or “dad”, but “zoo”, as he told journalist Esteban Sánchez-Ocaña in 1984 in an interview for Spanish Television (TVE).

Theodore stephanides my family and other animals