Margaret Durrell
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Margaret ('Margo') Isabel Mabel Durrell (1917-) was the younger sister of novelist Lawrence Durrell, and elder sister of naturalist, author and TV presenter Gerald Durrell. Born in British India, she was brought up in India, England and Corfu. Gerald Durrell's Corfu Trilogy — My Family and Other Animals, Birds, Beasts and Relatives and Garden of the Gods — lampoons her character variously.
Margo remained on Corfu following the departure of her mother and two brothers to England during World War II, sharing a peasant cottage with some local friends. She felt that Corfu was her true home and that she could not bear to leave it. In 1939, she met a British Air Force pilot, Jack Breeze, stationed on Corfu and married him in 1940. She went with him to South Africa for the remainder of the war. After the war ended, Margo and her husband moved to Bournemouth. After divorcing her first husband, she purchased a large house across the street from her mother's house, and after refurbishing it, she opened a boarding house there. Gerald Durrell's core collection for his zoo (now the Jersey Zoo) was initially housed on the premises of her boarding house. Margaret eventually remarried, her new husband's name being Malcolm Duncan.
Margaret invited her brother Gerald Durrell to live in a bedsitting room in her boarding house after his elopement with and marriage to Jacquie Durrell in 1952.
Margaret Durrell is the author of Whatever Happened to Margo?, a reprise on her pet name used in the Corfu Trilogy. Written in 1951, it was discovered in the attic by a granddaughter nearly 40 years later and published in 1995. [1] The book is an addition to the growing body of work on the history of the Durrell family.
[edit] Bibliography
- Whatever Happened to Margo? (1996, ISBN 0-233-98917-X)
[edit] References
- ^ Robin Balke, Paperback reviews, The Independent, October 13, 1996
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