Read in 2006: book 60
The Corfu Trilogy – Gerald Durrell
I have a terrible confession. The other day I went to Whipsnade Wild Animal Park. (I think it was a Safari Park when I was a kid, but that sort of thing is sorely unfashionable these days, even more frowned-upon than being a zoo.) As we wandered round, marvelling at the white rhinos, the giraffes and the zebras, I could hear nothing but Johnny Morris providing me with a humorous running commentary on all the animals in front of us, deploying his full range of funny voices – ponderous, squawking, shrill or gruff, depending on the bird or beast in question.
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It’s obviously my age – if you, like me, were a British child in the 1970s I defy you not to have the same experience. Such was the pervasive influence of Morris’s show Animal Magic on the viewers of tea-time television. In fact a few minutes with Google has just demonstrated how the Guardian review of this very book and an Independent profile of Durrell both carry that title, which proves my point rather nicely. But whereas Morris got hold of you during your childhood, Gerald Durrell almost inevitably followed in your teens. With its junior protagonist My Family and Other Animals was considered the perfect book to get 11- and 12-year-olds reading and in due course, having turned up at secondary school, I was given it to read as an inspired choice of English set book.
Since Durrell started his formal naturalist’s career as a trainee zookeeper at Whipsnade in 1945, we have now come more or less full circle and can turn our attention to the book. This fat, 750-page trilogy has been published to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the author’s most famous and best-loved work. Many, nay, most of us will have heard of it, if not actually read it. But I wasn’t even aware that its two less famous siblings, Birds, Beasts and Relatives and The Garden of the Gods, existed. Having enjoyed the original so much, on first reading and during all subsequent re-reads, I jumped at the chance for more of the same.
It would be impossible to appreciate this properly without starting at the beginning so I resisted the temptation to skip. Instead I treated myself to a pleasant warm-up jog through the familiar bit. And I realised that Durrell’s story is composed of two elements. One is the sun-drenched and idyllic descriptions of glorious Greek sunsets, gorgeous blue Ionian seas, shimmering olive groves – and, of course, all the flora and fauna that inhabit these mythic landscapes. The other is the humorous dialogue and description of his family, their manners and mores and the many characters that they meet and interact with on the island (Spiro the cab driver turned family patron saint, Lugaretzia, the aptly-named hypochondriac housekeeper, Margo’s appalling Turkish boyfriend or the enigmatic Rose Beetle Man). The genius lies in the fact that either of these things on their own would probably bore the reader silly – but in tandem they are delightful and give the author an opportunity to write about his preoccupations and be a crowd-pleaser at the same time. And, of course, they are both born from Durrell’s naturalist’s skills of observation and the ability to put his conclusions down in concise prose. I first read this book something like 25 years ago and it is a testament to its quality that I’m still enjoying it and finding new things in it now. It is worthy of space on anyone’s must-read list and if I had to make the famed Desert Island-style choice and limit myself to one small bookshelf for all my remaining mortal reading requirements I think this would truly have earned its place.
In Beasts, Birds and Relatives and The Garden of the Gods an older Durrell returns twice more to the scene of his childhood for additional volumes of reminiscences covering the same period of time. He describes the problem this gives him in the introduction to the first of these titles: “New readers do not want to be constantly irritated by references to a previous book that they have not read and the ones who have read the previous book do not want to be irritated by constant repetition of events with which they are familiar.” Durrell’s solution to this – as may be divined from the paraphrase of a title – is to reprise the first book, but for grown-ups after the children have been put to bed. This means a number of the more racy and amusing anecdotes not fit for the initial volume, for example Larry’s yacht-wrecking activities, Margo’s dabbling in spiritualism, Leslie’s court appearance, Mother’s reluctant romance with a very salty old sea-dog, the presence of an infuriating French count and a couple of entertainingly gullible gay American artists and Gerry’s presence at a birth (you almost expect him to whip out his collecting kit and start taking notes and samples) are all served up for the reader’s delectation. The more knowing, adult tone makes these later works read like a much more conventional memoir than the magical first volume and their policy of making explicit that which had been left implicit the first time around reaches an end point in a series of extracts from letters and postcards pinpointing the whereabouts of each family member at the outbreak of the war. Having read them I can see why they are commensurately less famous than My Family and Other Animals – great to read if you have enjoyed the first volume, and want more of the same but, to be perfectly honest, probably not classics in their own right. However I feel my appreciation of the first book has been immeasurably enriched and added to by having the context and backstory that these books provide and I think that alone would justify the decision to publish them as a trilogy.
Having read them, it’s easy to see the how the seeds of Durrell’s career as an animal collector were sown – a career that led him around the world in search of exotic specimens for zoos and later to a passionate interest in conservation which was well ahead of its time. This brings me back around to Whipsnade. Even as someone now quite far advanced into adulthood, an excursion to look at tigers, hippopotami, elephants, antelopes and all their exotic cousins has lost none of its thrill or wonder. I understand and empathise with all the arguments on why these wonderful animals shouldn’t be penned up in a damp and chilly Bedfordshire field merely for my viewing pleasure. But I also cannot dismiss the notion that allowing people to get right up close to something as rare and precious as a family group of white rhinos, or to exclaim in delight over a wobbly baby giraffe, builds a strong pro-conservation lobby and puts a concrete, understandable face on the abstract ideas of global warming, depletion of species and the crucial importance of biodiversity. Gerald Durrell (and probably Johnny Morris too, more than we’d like to admit) is responsible for creating this sense of wonder as well as for his more concrete conservation work – and for that we may be very thankful, from the biodiversity perspective, in a few generations’ time.
Some links:
- Guardian review
- Independent profile of Gerald Durrell
- Penguin book pages – synopsis, extract, author bio
- British Children Have More Fun (with onward links)
- Margo’s Wikipedia page
- Larry’s Wikipedia page (including details of The Wife Who Is Never Mentioned)
- Theo’s Wikipedia page
- The Jersey Zoological Park (now known as Durrell Wildlife)