Darrell Jackie family relationships. The true story of the Darrells in Corfu. Life and work

1984-85

Younger brother of noted novelist Lawrence Durrell (1912-1990), Leslie Durrell (1918-1981) and Margo Darrell (1920-2007).

Biography

He was the fourth and youngest child of British civil engineer Lawrence Samuel Durrell and his wife Louise Florence Durrell (née Dixie). According to relatives, already at the age of two, Gerald fell ill with zoomania, and his mother later recalled that he was one of the first to say the word “zoo” (zoo).

Gerald Durrell's early home teachers had few real educators. The only exception was the naturalist Theodore Stephanides (-). It was from him that Gerald received his first systematic knowledge of zoology. Stephanides appears more than once on the pages of one of Gerald Durrell's most famous books, My Family and Other Beasts. The books “Birds, Beasts and Relatives” () and “Amateur Naturalist” () are dedicated to him.

Familiar places evoked a lot of childhood memories - this is how the famous "Greek" trilogy appeared: "My family and other animals"(1956)," Birds, animals and relatives"(1969) and" Garden of the gods"(1978). The first book in the trilogy was a wild success, reprinted 30 times in the UK and 20 times in the US.

In total, Gerald Durrell wrote more than 30 books (almost all of them were translated into dozens of languages) and made 35 films. The debut four-episode TV movie "To Bafut With Beagles" ("To Bafut With Beagles", BBC), released in 1958, was very popular in England.

Thirty years later, Darrell managed to shoot in the Soviet Union, with active participation and assistance from the Soviet side. The result was the thirteen-episode film Durrell in Russia (also shown on the first television channel of the USSR in 1986-1988) and the book Durrell in Russia (not officially translated into Russian).

In the USSR, Darrell's books were printed repeatedly and in large print runs.

Darrell's main idea was to breed rare and endangered species of animals in a zoo in order to further resettle them in their natural habitats. This idea has now become an accepted scientific concept. If not for the Jersey Foundation, many species of animals would be preserved only as stuffed animals in museums. Thanks to the Foundation, the pink dove, Mauritian kestrel, golden lion marmoset and marmoset monkeys, the Australian corroboree frog, the Madagascar tortoise and many other species have been saved from extinction.

Gerald Durrell died on January 30, 1995 from blood poisoning, nine months after a liver transplant, at the age of 71.

Durrell's major expeditions

Major literary works

Awards and prizes

Animal species and subspecies named after Gerald Durrell

• Clarkeia durrelli- a fossil early Silurian brachiopod from the Rhynchonellid order, discovered in 1982 (however, there is no exact information that it was named after Gerald Durrell).
• Nactus serpensinsula durrelli- a subspecies of the island bare-toed gecko from Krugly Island from the group

6 chose

From childhood, he was different from other people. The first word that little Jerry said was zoo. The first vivid childhood memory is a pair of snails found in a ditch with a joyful cry.

Gerald Durrell throughout his life lovingly led his "animal ark" through all the troubles and hardships.

The animals were happy, but Darrell's beloved woman only managed to pull out of the matrimonial bed either an anteater, or a monkey, or a squirrel ...

Jerry and Jackie

19-year-old Jackie was preparing for an opera career, working in her father's office and leading a quiet measured life. Once the blissful atmosphere of the house was broken by a gang of singers who rented rooms in a hotel owned by a friend of the girl's family. Among them was a tall young man who proudly accepted the admiration of the female retinue.

"Hello, I'm Gerald Durrell," he introduced himself.

By that time, he was not yet a world-famous author of books about animals that sparkled with humor. 24-year-old blue-eyed Jerry was an ordinary trapper who knew how to charm and make anyone laugh until colic in the stomach. Anyone but Jackie.

“He immediately stared at me like a basilisk,” Jackie recalled. But Darrell's charm did not affect the girl. The proud young woman contemptuously avoided Darrell's company. And he… fell in love at first sight.

Darrell walked around Jackie in circles, unsure how to approach. Jokes, travel stories, and strange animals had no effect. And the business trip was over, and Gerald had to leave.

Only Jackie breathed a sigh of relief, getting rid of the obsessive gentleman, as he returned again! And no longer on business, but purposefully - to Jackie.

The beauty took pity and allowed to invite her to a restaurant. The evening flew by instantly, they talked and could not stop talking. But Darrell was on his way again. He disappeared for six months, leaving for British Guiana. However, this was his most chaotic trip, because the face of the beautiful Jackie always rose before his eyes. And again he returned already with very serious intentions. True, Jackie's father did not support these intentions: what kind of groom - rushes with every beast, as with a written sack, dangles all over the world. Does a daughter need such a swindler?

And then Darrell came up with a cunning plan to steal Jackie from his parents' house. The girl herself didn't mind. While the father was away, the couple quickly gathered the most necessary things and were like that, leaving their stepmother Jackie in complete bewilderment.

They went to Darrell's sister - Margot, in the town of Bournemouth. Three days later, Darrell asked Jackie a question that had worried him for a very long time: "Will you marry me?"

It was five in the morning, they had just returned from a walk, and for a tired Jackie, as she later jokingly recalled, the easiest way to get rid of Jerry and go to bed was to answer: "Yes."

Hairy frog bugs

Margot gave the newlyweds a tiny room, which became their home for many years. Everything seemed to fall into place: they are finally together. But Jerry had big problems with work, there was no money. Lawrence Durrell, the famous writer and brother of Jerry, tried to convince him more than once: "You have already traveled so much around the world that more than one book can be written about your adventures!"

Jackie did her best to support this idea. One day, the Durrell family heard on the radio a vague story about travels in Africa.

“What nonsense!” Gerald was indignant. “Africa can be told much more interestingly!”

"If you can do better, do it," Jackie said.

And Darrell sat down at the typewriter. During the day he was busy working at the zoo, and at night he pounded on the keys right above the ear of his beloved. A couple of weeks later, he handed Jackie an incredibly funny story about a unique animal - a hairy frog. While reading, Jackie laughed both at the content and at the huge number of spelling errors. It turned out that Darrell is completely illiterate! So Jackie became Darrell's first reader, first editor, and first proofreader.

The story was a success. Darrell himself read it on the radio and received an excellent fee.

Now Darrell was simply obliged to write. For a month of night work, "The Overloaded Ark" was written, the fee from which the Durrells immediately spent on their first joint expedition to Argentina and Paraguay. While the equipment was being purchased, Jerry was finishing the next story about his adventures - "Hounds of Bafut".

"No, I'm not a writer after all!" - Darrell often exclaimed, tired of writing. But Jackie almost forced him to sit behind the typewriter.

"Mom" anteater

On the expedition, Jackie finally realized who she was messing with. While her Jerry roamed the pampas with glowing eyes in search of rare animals, Jackie tried on the role of the mother of all those who were mined by her husband. Tiny wild squirrels, lame foxes, playful monkeys, anteaters, lizards, rats, birds of various breeds and sizes - they all required food, care and attention. Once Gerald caught a chick of a Palamedea. He refused to eat and it was clear that if the baby did not eat at least something soon, he would die. He was released into the garden - choose what you want!

The chick hesitated around the spinach bushes. Then it dawned on Jackie: after all, these chicks eat only the food that their mother chews for them. So you need to do the same! Gerald skillfully denied this mission, citing his smoking. And Jackie chewed spinach leaves for several weeks and fed them to the chick. "May I ever touch that spinach!" she exclaimed afterwards.

Whomever her husband did not drag into the marital bed: both the anteater cub and the newborn armadillo ... "You will involuntarily feel that the whole world is your relatives!" exclaimed Jackie.

After returning to England, Gerald fell ill with jaundice, and while Jackie was treating him, in just two weeks he wrote his most famous book, My Family and Other Animals.

The fee was "thrown" on the next expedition to Cameroon. Jackie has already stopped dreaming about new curtains in their room and finally "changed" from dresses into a work suit: wide trousers and a shirt - it's more convenient to clean up after the animals!

But from the trip, Darrell again brought a whole caravan of wild animals. True, there was nowhere to attach them ...

Jackie came up with the idea: "What if you don't sell animals to different zoos, but open your own zoo?"

Gerald caught fire and rushed to look for a place. But there was none in Bournemouth. Winter came. Their yard was full of cages with wild heat-loving animals. Jerry panicked.

The case helped. Darrell's friend invited him to the island of Jersey, where he offered to rent out his family nest. Darrell was jumping for joy! He soon left for Argentina to shoot a film for the BBC. It was their first long breakup. And it was logical: depressing lack of money, constant hassle with unattached animals added coolness to the relationship. They needed to take a break from each other.

Returning, Darrell began to equip his zoo. Jackie was always there. She understood that once again the animals came to the fore for Gerald. "I have a feeling," Jackie confessed, "that I married a zoo." The zoo really took almost all of their time and all their little savings. They saved on everything: they bought rotten fruits and cut out edible parts from them, picked up nuts that visitors dropped near the cages, and fed monkeys and birds with them ...

After their trip to Corfu, the island of Darrell's childhood, sung by him in "My family ...", Gerald ... started drinking. Corfu has changed. The coast was overgrown with hotels, construction vehicles crawled everywhere - nothing remained of the romantic island of childhood. Darrell blamed himself for this: after a sensational book about the island, tourists rushed to the "new" land. After Darrell left the clinic where he was treated for depression and alcoholism, Jerry and Jackie broke up.

Further Darrell was waiting for many other adventures. He traveled, wrote books, traveled the world with lectures, founded his own wildlife fund ... And at 52, he even fell in love with 27-year-old Lee McGeorge, who became his second wife. But he remembered Jackie for the rest of his life, and was very grateful that she made him write books and never, never kicked the animals out of their bed.

Indeed, Darrell and the group came to the USSR three times. Here is the filming route:
October 22, 1984 - the film crew flew to Moscow, after which they went to the bison nursery of the Prioksko-Terrasny Reserve.
October 28 - flew to the Caucasus, where they filmed in the Caucasian Reserve, Sochi, Georgia.
In mid-November, Darrell returns to England.
The impression from the first trip was twofold. Here is what Botting writes:
Gerald's impressions of the Soviet Union remained mixed. In mid-November, Gerald and Lee returned to Jersey. “All I can say,” he wrote to Lee’s parents in Memphis, “is that now we are experiencing a kind of mixture of love and hatred for this country. We saw a lot that we liked and deeply touched. But we also saw what to see we wouldn't want to. We're especially tormented by the thought that so many wonderful people are forced to exist in a system that I myself wouldn't want to live in. Worse, almost all of them know about it, but never do not confess."
In the spring of 1985, the film crew returned and went to the Darwin Reserve.
April 8 - arrived in the Prioksky Reserve
April 19 - flew to Eastern Siberia - Buryatia, Barguzinsky Reserve, Baikal.
May 2 - Karakum - Repetek Reserve (Turkmenistan)
Then Uzbekistan - Tashkent, Bukhara, Samarkand, Chatkal...
May 22 - the group returns to Moscow and flies to Jersey
June 5 - return to the USSR
June 7 - Astrakhan Nature Reserve
After him moving to Kalmykia
June 16 - Ukraine: Askania-Nova, Kiev
A week later the group was in Belarus - Minsk, Berezinsky Reserve.
July 8 - the group flew to Khatanga - to Taimyr
July 20 - Filming wraps up and the Durrells return to England.
By plane, Gerald and Lee returned to England, unable to get rid of the taste of vodka and venison. They completed the most amazing journey of their lives. They managed to see twenty reserves on the most unexplored part of the land by Western scientists. During this time they shot almost thirty miles of film. “The way nature conservation is set up in the Soviet Union made a deep impression on us,” Gerald wrote literally on the eve of the collapse of the USSR. “Here it is given such importance as in no other country in the world. Although all these actions are far from perfect, they are to the highest standards. The country has many of the most diverse nature reserves, in each of which we were met by very purposeful and charming people, sincerely interested in the results of their work. This trip was very interesting and exciting. "
On August 13, three weeks after returning from the Soviet Union, Gerald and Lee completed work on a book about their trip. This trip changed Gerald. He told Lee that it would be nice to write a sequel to the book "Naturalist at the fly" and call it "Russians at the fly - along the steppe in the right direction."
Unfortunately, the second book was never written... And it, like "Naturalist at gunpoint", written about the filming of the film "Amateur Naturalist", would have been much more interesting...
In February 1986, Darrell underwent a complicated hip replacement operation, which greatly disturbed him while traveling in the USSR. In April, the series premiered on Channel 4 of British Television. The film was a great success with the audience.
The film premiered in the USSR on January 2, 1988 on the main channel of Central Television.

And finally, a few excerpts about the trip from an interview with Soviet publications:
***
- Why did I decide to come to the USSR and make this multi-part program? The fact is that in the West, the only idea about your country that a person who has not been to Russia can get is that which is formed by the mass media. Nothing can be learned about the life of the Soviet Union, about the people of your country, about nature...
I thought: it would be nice to show not only the protection of nature (although for me nature and man are inseparable, and therefore I consider the protection of nature and the protection of man as one common cause), but also the real life of the USSR - a huge country. Indeed, many in the West do not even imagine that the Soviet Union consists not only of Russia, but of 15 union republics, and Russia is only one of them. I didn't imagine it until I came here. I sincerely hope that thanks to our TV show, millions of people in dozens of countries around the world will be able to see how things are in the USSR, to see the realities of your country.
When I first said at home that I was going to the Union, there were some questions: what to shoot there? Is there something you haven't seen yet? To be honest, not all of my acquaintances realize how rich and diverse landscapes are in your country.
Gerald Durrell: "We only have one land" ("Around the World" No. 6 (2548), June, 1986)
***
- What made the greatest impression on you in the USSR?
- A lot. Especially the fact that you are using captive breeding as one of the means of protecting them. I find this method very effective and follow it myself. Here I saw animals that I most wanted to meet: muskrat, Baikal seal, saiga.
- It is believed that with a certain amount of imagination, everyone can compare themselves with any animal. In that case, who are you like?
- Friends say that the Russian bear.
- Will you write a book about your trip to the USSR?
- Yes, and not one, but two: I will make a photo album and a story about the filming. - What is your favorite leisure time activity?
- Cooking for friends. From every country I have visited, I bring culinary recipes. Now I'm going to cook according to a Russian cookbook translated into English. I can’t read Russian, but the language is pleasant to my ear, it reminds me a little of Greek, which I have known since childhood, since I lived on the island of Corfu. When I hear Russian speech, I always have the feeling that I should have understood it. But I can't, and it's annoying!
("Week", No. 36, 1985)
Almost all articles are Soviet pathetic and "ideologically verified." For example, how do you like this interpretation from the Pravda newspaper?
The scientist draws himself up for an official statement and specifically asks to enter his words in the "protocol":
- From the first second of my appearance on Soviet soil, I find real friends. I'm just amazed at the fact that I'm known so well in your country.
True, Darrell immediately begins to complain that they are treating him like a child: they are afraid that he will not catch a cold, fall off his horse, or dislocate, God forbid, his leg.
“Still,” he says, “there is one drawback to traveling in an unfamiliar country, and that is traveling with your wife…
After waiting for the laughter to subside, Lee Darrell adds to her husband's words
- Gerald is right. We found a lot of friends here, although we have been in the Soviet Union for a very short time ...
The Darrells came to us as part of the film crew of the Canadian television company Primediya Productions at the invitation of the USSR State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company. The company is working on a thirteen-episode film codenamed "Darrell's Adventures in Russia" and is filming in nature reserves, zoos, and museums.
“I don't agree with that title,” Darrell admits. - Perhaps it would be more correct to call this cycle as follows: "Steps in the right direction." I think it will be an interesting work about the Soviet Union. What do we see on TV at home? Only military parades on Red Square. I want to show the beauty of Russia, its wildlife and, most importantly, the beauty of people.
- By the way, do Soviet readers write to you?
“Twenty to forty letters from the USSR come in a week,” Darrell replies. - Fortunately, an elderly woman who knows Russian lives near our zoo in Jersey. She also helps us in correspondence. I am always willing to make professional contacts...
Looking ahead a little, I will give such a detail. Having examined the Moscow Zoo on the eve of his departure from the Soviet Union, Darrell first of all asked: when will the “resettlement” of the zoo to the new territory begin, about which he heard a lot?
“Smartly and scientifically organized zoos will be the last resort for a huge number of endangered species,” Darrell said.
Six years ago, a one-year-old male spectacled bear, a South American animal included in the Red Book, was donated to the Moscow Zoo for long-term breeding from Jersey Island. At the same time, his "brother" was transferred to the New York Zoo.
“You see, our Jersey Zoo has become like a third state between the Soviet Union and the United States,” Darrell says. - The Moscow bear, I must say, has grown up, he has a girlfriend, life, in a word, goes on. But the American somehow fell into disrepair, remained alone ...
Saying goodbye, Gerald Durrell said:
- I fell in love with the Russian people. And I will be glad if our current work serves a good cause...

A small British family arrived on a long visit, consisting of a widowed mother and three children no older than twenty. A month earlier, the fourth son arrived there, who was over twenty - and besides, he was married; at first they all stopped in Perama. The mother with her younger offspring settled in the house, which they later began to call the Strawberry-Pink Villa, and the eldest son and his wife first settled in the house of a fisherman neighbor.

This, of course, was the Durrell family. Everything else, as they say, belongs to history.

Is it so?

Is not a fact. In the years that have passed since then, many words have been written about the Durrells and about the five years they spent in Corfu, from 1935 to 1939, most of them by the Durrells themselves. And yet, regarding this period of their lives, there are still many unanswered questions, and the main one is - what exactly happened during these years?

Gerald Durrell. 1987

I was able to ask this question myself. Gerald Durrell in the 1970s when I took a group of schoolchildren to the Darrell Zoo in Jersey on a trip to the Channel Islands.

Gerald treated us all with extraordinary kindness. But he refused to answer questions about Corfu unless I promised to return next year with another group of students. I promised. And then he very frankly answered all the questions that I asked him.

At that time, I considered it a confidential conversation, so I never recounted much of what was said. But I still used the main milestones of his story - to seek explanations from others. The detailed picture that I was thus able to put together I shared with Douglas Botting, who then wrote an authorized biography of Gerald Durrell, and with Hilary Pipeti when she was writing her guide "In the Footsteps of Lawrence and Gerald Durrell in Corfu, 1935-1939".

Now, however, everything has changed. Namely - all members of this family have long died. Mr Durrell died in India in 1928, Mrs Durrell in England in 1965, Leslie Durrell in England in 1981, Lawrence Durrell in France in 1990, Gerald Durrell in Jersey in 1995, and Finally, Margo Darrell died in England in 2006.

They all had children, with the exception of Gerald; but the reason why it was impossible to give details of that old conversation died with Margot.

What now needs to be said?

I think some important questions about Durrellach in Corfu, which are still occasionally heard, require an answer. Below I just try to answer them - truthfully, as far as possible. What I am presenting was, for the most part, told by Darrell to me personally.

1. Is Gerald's book My Family and Other Animals more of a fiction or more of a non-fiction?

Documentary. All the characters mentioned in it are real people, and all of them are carefully described by Gerald. The same applies to animals. And all the cases described in the book are facts, although not always presented in chronological order, but Gerald himself warns about this in the preface to the book. The dialogue also faithfully reproduces the manner in which the Durrells communicated with each other.

2. If so, why does Lawrence live with his family in the book, when in fact he was married and lived separately in Kalami? And why is there no mention of his wife Nancy Darrell in the book?

Because, in fact, Lawrence and Nancy spent most of their time in Corfu with the Darrell family, and not in the White House in Kalami - this refers to the period when Mrs. Durrell rented the huge Yellow and White Villas (that is, from September 1935 to August 1937 and from September 1937 until their departure from Corfu.They rented the strawberry-pink villa for the first time, and this lasted less than six months).

In fact, the Durrells have always been a very close-knit family, and Mrs. Durrell was in these years the center of family life. Both Leslie and Margot, after they turned twenty, also lived for some time on Corfu separately, but wherever they settled in Corfu during these years (the same applies to Leslie and Nancy), Mrs. Darrell's villas always turned out to be among these places.

However, it should be noted that Nancy Darrell never really became a member of the family, and she and Lawrence parted forever - shortly after leaving Corfu.

Lawrence and Nancy Durrell. 1930s

3. "My family and other animals" - a more or less truthful account of the events of that time. What about Gerald's other Corfu books?

Over the years, invention has increased. In his second book about Corfu, Birds, Beasts and Relatives, Gerald told some of his best stories about his time in Corfu, and most of these stories are true, though not all. Some of the stories were pretty wacky, so he later regretted including them in the book.

Many of the events described in the third book, The Garden of the Gods, are also fictitious. In short, the most complete and detailed about life on Corfu told in the first book. The second included some stories that were not included in the first, but they were not enough for a whole book, so fiction had to fill in the gaps. And the third book and the collection of short stories that followed it, although they contained some share of real events, are mostly literature.

4. Are all the facts about this period of the family's life included in Gerald's books and stories about Corfu, or was something deliberately omitted?

Something has been deliberately omitted. And even more than intentionally. Toward the end, Gerald grew increasingly out of his mother's control and lived with Lawrence and Nancy in Kalami for some time. For a number of reasons, he never mentioned this period. But it was precisely at this time that Gerald could rightfully be called a "child of nature."

So, if childhood really is, as they say, a "writer's bank account", then it was in Corfu that both Gerald and Lawrence more than replenished his experience, subsequently reflected in their books.

5. It is said that the Durrells led an immoral lifestyle in Corfu that offended the local population. Is it so?

Just not Gerald. In those years he Corfu was just a small and adored boy. He was loved not only by his mother and other family members, but also by everyone around him: the islanders whom he knew and with whom he communicated in quite tolerable Greek; numerous teachers he had over the years, and especially Theodore Stephanides, who treated him like his own son, as well as the Durrells' guide and mentor - Spiro (Americanos), a taxi driver.

However, other family members did offend public opinion more than once, namely: Nancy and Lawrence got rid of their first child and buried the fetus on the shores of Kalami Bay; Margot, of which there is little doubt, became pregnant without a husband and had to go to England to give the child up for adoption; finally, Leslie, who had conceived a maid, Maria Condu, refused to marry her and provide for their son.

Gerald alluded to the case of Margot at the beginning of the chapter "Fight with the Spirits" in the book "Birds, Beasts and Relatives", but he says there only that in the midst of their stay in Corfu, Mrs. Darrell had to urgently send Margot to London in connection with "sudden obesity".

The events described at the beginning of chapter 12 of the book "My family and other animals" are also authentic. The main villain turned out to be Gerald's teacher - Peter, in real life Pat Ivens. Pat was expelled from the Darrell family, but after leaving Corfu, he did not leave Greece and became a hero of the Greek Resistance during World War II. He then returned to England and married. However, he never told his wife or son about the Darrells.

The White House in Kalami, Corfu, where Lawrence Durrell lived

6. During the years of life in Corfu and the post-war years, the Durrells were not very well known. How much has their fame grown since then?

Lawrence is now considered one of the most notable writers of the 20th century. Almost all of his books are still being published, and two early novels are being prepared for re-release over the next year (2009 - OS) by the Darrell School on Corfu and its founding director, Richard Pine. In addition, his travelogues are also highly valued.

Gerald Durrell, in turn, wrote 37 books in his life, but only a few of them are still reprinted. Unlike his brother Lawrence, Gerald went down in history not so much as a writer, but as a naturalist and educator. His main legacy is the Jersey Zoo, which breeds and releases rare animals, and the book My Family and Other Animals itself, one of the best travel books in literary history.

Gerald Durrell and his wife Jackie. 1954

7. The Durrells seem to have made the decision to leave Corfu in 1938 - seventy years have passed since then. In the first place, why did they even go to Corfu? Why did they leave in 1939? And why didn't they ever go there again, if the experience there was the key to Lawrence and Gerald's writing careers?

In early 1938, they realized that a new world war was imminent, and began to prepare to leave the island in 1939. Whether they had the opportunity to stay in Corfu, if not for the war, is a moot point. Mrs Darrell initially went to Corfu following her son Lawrence in 1935, since it was much better to live there on her pension than in Britain. But by 1938 she was having financial difficulties and would have had to return home anyway. In addition, during this time the children grew up and left their father's house, and Gerald, the youngest, had to study.

By the end of World War II, everything had changed. Gerald was twenty, the rest of the children by that time had found their way in life. In addition, in the post-war world one could hardly afford to lead the same way of life as before the war with rather meager means.

And Corfu has changed forever.

Nevertheless, the Durrells repeatedly came there to rest. Lawrence and Gerald bought houses in France, and Margot - next to her mother in Bournemouth. Only Leslie proved financially bankrupt and died in relative poverty in 1981.

Gerald, Louise and Lawrence Durrell. 1961

8. Is anyone still alive who knew the Durrells in Corfu? And what places in Corfu are worth visiting to restore the course of events?

Mary Stephanides, Theodore's widow, although already advanced in age, still lives in London. Her daughter Alexia lives in Greece. And on Corfu itself, in Perama, the Kontos family, who have known the Durrells since 1935, still lives. The head of the family remains Menelaos Kontos, who owns the Aegli Hotel in Perama. Vassilis Kontos, his son, who runs Corfu Holidays, owns the Strawberry Pink Villa, the first home of the Durrells in Corfu. It is now up for sale for 1,200,000 euros.

Next door to Aegli is the Batis tavern, owned by Elena, Menelaos' sister. And Elena's son and daughter-in-law - Babis and Lisa - own a luxury apartment on a hill overlooking the tavern. Her daughter and granddaughter also own hotels, including Pondikonissi, across the street from Aegli and directly on the beach that the Durrells used to go to when they lived in Perama.

The best chronicle of these years is the book by Hilary Pipeti "In the footsteps of Lawrence and Gerald Durrell in Corfu, 1935-1939".

And in the center of the city of Corfu is the Durrell School, in which courses are held every year under the guidance of one of Lawrence Durrell's biographers - Richard Pine.

9. And finally, what was the contribution of the Durrells to the development of Corfu, if any?

Invaluable. At the same time, both the government and the people of Corfu are only now beginning to realize it. The book "My Family and Other Animals" is not only sold in millions of copies around the world, but has already been read by several generations of children as part of the school curriculum. This book alone brought the island and the inhabitants of Corfu the widest fame and prosperity.

Add to that all the other books written by or about the Durrells; all this together eventually turned into what can be called the "Durrell industry", which continues to generate huge turnovers and attract millions of tourists to the island. Their contribution to the tourism industry is huge, and now it exists on the island for everyone - whether you're a fan of the Durrells or not.

Gerald himself deplored the influence he had on the development of Corfu, but in fact the influence was mostly for the better, since when the Durrells first arrived there in 1935, most of the population lived in poverty. Now, largely due to their stay there, the whole world knows about the island and most of the locals live quite comfortably.

This is the biggest contribution of the Durrells to the life of Corfu.

(c) Peter Harrison. Translation from English by Svetlana Kalakutskaya.

First published in The Corfiot, May 2008, #209. Publication of the portal openspace.ru

Photos: Getty Images / Fotobank, Corbis / Foto S.A., amateursineden.com, Montse & Ferran ⁄ flickr.com, Mike Hollist / Daily Mail / Rex Features / Fotodom

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Gerald Durrell was born on January 7, 1925 in the Indian city of Jamshedpur, the son of civil engineer Samuel Durrell and Louise Florence. In 1928, after the death of their father, the family moved to England, and five years later, at the invitation of Gerald's older brother, Lawrence Durrell, to the Greek island of Corfu.

Gerald Durrell's early home teachers had few real educators. The only exception was the naturalist Theodore Stephanides (1896-1983). It was from him that Gerald received his first knowledge of zoology. Stephanides appears on the pages of Gerald Durrell's most famous book, My Family and Other Beasts. The book The Amateur Naturalist (1968) is also dedicated to him.

In 1939 (after the outbreak of World War II), Gerald and his family returned to England and got a job in one of the London pet stores. But the real start to Darrell's career as an explorer was at Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire. Here Gerald got a job immediately after the war as a "boy on little animals." It was here that he received his first professional training and began to collect a "dossier" containing information about rare and endangered species of animals (and this was 20 years before the appearance of the International Red Book).

In 1947, Gerald Durrell organizes two expeditions - to Cameroon and Guyana. But the expedition did not bring profits, and in the early 50s. Darrell was unemployed. Not a single zoo in Australia, the USA and Canada, where he applied with requests, could not offer him a job. He found only a temporary shelter (housing and food) without any salary in a menagerie at the fair of the resort town of Margate.

Relatives began to show concern about his future and the elder brother Lawrence, a well-known writer and diplomat, a representative of modernism in English literature of the 50-70s, was summoned to the family council. It was then that the thought dawned on him that even his younger brother could take up a pen, especially since the British are literally obsessed with stories about animals. Gerald was not particularly happy about this, as he had difficulties with syntax and spelling.

As often happens, chance helped. Having once heard on the radio a completely illiterate story from the point of view of a biologist about someone's journey to West Africa, where he himself had been, Darrell could not stand it. He sat down and typed his first story on a typewriter with two fingers: "Hunting for a hairy frog." And then a miracle happened. The editors reported that his story was a success. Gerald was even invited to speak on the radio himself. The fee forced him to sit down to create new stories.

The first book - "The Overloaded Ark" (1952) - was devoted to a trip to Cameroon and caused enthusiastic responses from both readers and critics. The author was noticed by major publishers, and the royalties from books made it possible to organize an expedition to South America in 1954. However, a military coup broke out in Paraguay, and almost the entire living collection, collected with great difficulty, had to be abandoned, running away from the junta (then General Alfredo Stroessner came to power, who became a dictator for a long 35 years). Durrell described his impressions of this trip in his next book, Under the Canopy of the Drunken Forest (1955).

At the same time, at the invitation of his brother Larry, he rested in Cyprus and Greece. Familiar places evoked a lot of childhood memories - this is how the "Greek" trilogy appeared: "My Family and Beasts" (1955), "Birds, Beasts and Relatives" (1969) and "Garden of the Gods" (1978). The incredible success of "My Family" (it was reprinted more than 30 times in the UK alone and over 20 times in the US) led serious critics to speculate about the revival of English literature. Moreover, this work of a "non-professional" author was included in the program of final school exams in literature.

The ironic Lawrence Durrell wrote about his younger brother: “The little devil writes beautifully! His style is fresh like lettuce!" Gerald was a master of the "animal" portrait. All the animals described by him are individual and are remembered as if you yourself met them.

Darrell's incredible performance impressed those around him. He has written over 30 books (which have been translated into dozens of languages) and made 35 films. The debut four-episode television film "In Bafut for Beef", released in 1958, made the whole of England cling to television screens. Later, in the early 1980s, filming was also possible in the then closed Soviet Union. The result was the thirteen-episode film "Durrell in Russia" (shown on the first channel of domestic television in 1988) and the book "Durrell in Russia" (not translated into Russian).

Fantastic in the work of Gerald Durrell.

Among the fantastic works of the author, the story-tale “The Talking Bundle”, which has been repeatedly published in Russia, is the most famous. Some mystical stories were included in the collections Halibut Fillet, Picnic and Other Outrages. Until now, the Fantastic Journeys dilogy, as well as some novels and stories written for children, have not been translated into Russian.

Of the unfinished projects of Gerald Durrell, one can single out the musical about Dracula "I want to drive a stake into my heart." “... it had arias like “It’s a wonderful day, you can do evil today” and “You have something to hide, Dr. Jekyll.”

Gerald Durrell is also the author of numerous poetic sketches, most of which were never published during his lifetime. “In my free time, I try to surpass my older brother in poetry to the best of my ability. I have written a series of poems about animals called "Anthropomorphy" and I hope that I will be allowed to illustrate them myself. Naturally, my poems are more mystical and philosophical than Larry's poetic opuses ... ".

Nevertheless, the main merit of Gerald Durrell will remain the zoo he created in 1959 on the island of Jersey and the Jersey Wildlife Conservation Trust formed on its basis in 1963. Darrell's main idea was to breed rare animals in a zoo and then resettle them in their natural habitats. This idea has now become an accepted scientific concept. If it weren't for the Jersey Trust, many animal species would only survive as stuffed animals in museums.