Durrell Family

The Durrell family included:

Lawrence Samuel Durrell (1884–1928), an Anglo-Indian Engineer and his wife Louisa Florence Durrell (1886–1964) and their children:

• Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990), a diplomat and writer, best known for writing The Alexandria Quartet, in addition to travel literature.
• Leslie Durrell (1918–1983), the second eldest brother, noted in Gerald Durrell's Corfu Trilogy — My Family and Other Animals, Birds, Beasts and Relatives and The Garden of the Gods — to have had interests in ballistics, hunting and sailing.
• Margaret Durrell (1920–2007), ran a boarding house in Bournemouth. Her account of that experience, Whatever Happened to Margo?, was published in 1995, about forty years after she authored it.
• Gerald Durrell (1925–1995), a popular naturalist, conservationist, television host and author, credited with redefining the modern zoo. Founder of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust.
  • His first wife, Jacquie Durrell (1929– ), author, naturalist and television host
  • His second wife, Lee McGeorge Durrell (1949– ), author, naturalist and Honorary Director of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust

Lawrence Samuel Durrell and Louisa Durrell and their children were all born in India, as was Louisa Durrell's father, who lived in India during the British Raj. Following Lawrence Samuel Durrell's death in 1928, Mrs Durrell and her three younger children moved to England where Lawrence had already been sent to be educated. In 1935 they moved to Corfu, again following Lawrence's earlier move there with his wife. They remained in Corfu until 1939, when the outbreak of World War II forced them to return to England. Gerald's autobiographical work My Family and Other Animals and another two books in his Corfu Trilogy records the family's time in Corfu, albeit in a somewhat fictionalized way.