Durrell family

English writers

The English Durrell family were a British family. It is the subject of extensive autobiographical writings by its members, primarily father and son Lawrence and Gerald, studies and biographies, the TV series My Family and Other Animals (1987), the television film My Family and Other Animals (2005), the largely fictionalized TV series The Durrells (2016–2019), and the documentary What the Durrells Did Next.

Lawrence Samuel Durrell, Louisa Durrell and their children were all born in India during the British Raj. The Durrell children were fourth-generation settlers in India, their paternal grandmother Dora Johnstone and maternal grandfather George Dixie having also been born on the sub-continent.

Following Lawrence Samuel Durrell's death in 1928, Louisa Durrell and her three surviving younger children moved to the United Kingdom, where Lawrence had already been sent to be educated. In 1935, the Durrells moved to the Greek island of Corfu. They remained there until the summer of 1939, when the impending outbreak of World War II forced most of them to return to Britain. Gerald's autobiographical Corfu trilogy and several short stories give a somewhat fictionalised account the family's time in Corfu, while Lawrence's Prospero's Cell, A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corcyra (1945) is assembled from his diaries and notebooks, mainly for the years 1937 and 1938.

## Family members

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The family was founded by:

* Lawrence Samuel Durrell (b. 23 September 1884, Dum Dum, Bengal, today West Bengal;[1][2] d. 16 April 1928, Dalhousie, Chamba, today Himachal Pradesh[3]). The son of Samuel Amos Durrell (1851–1914),[4] an official in the British Army's Ordnance Department in Bengal, and his second wife, Dora Maria Johnstone (1862–1943). Lawrence Samuel was a civil engineer working mainly on railway and construction projects in north-east India, eventually founding his own company of Durrell & Co. in Jamshedpur.
* Louisa Florence Dixie (b. 16 January 1886, Roorkee, North-Western Provinces, today Uttarakhand;[5] d. 24 January 1964, Bournemouth, Dorset). Her father George Dixie was head clerk and accountant at the Ganges Canal Foundry in Roorkee.[6][7] She met Lawrence Samuel Durrell while he was studying at the town's Thomason College of Civil Engineering and they married at St John the Baptist Church in Roorkee on 23 November 1910.[8]

Their children were:

* Lawrence George Durrell (b. 27 February 1912, Jalandhar, Punjab;[9][10] d. 7 November 1990, Sommières, Gard[11]). A writer and diplomat, Lawrence is best known for The Alexandria Quartet, in addition to his poetry and travel writings.
* Margery Ruth Durrell (b. 12 November 1915, Mymensingh, Bengal, today Bangladesh;[12][13] d. 10 April 1916, Bengal[14]). Succumbed to diphtheria.
* Leslie Stuart Durrell (b. 10 March 1917, Mymensingh, Bengal, today Bangladesh;[15][16] d. 13 August 1982, City of Westminster, London[17]). He had a fascination with guns and shooting — as depicted in Gerald Durrell's Corfu trilogy — Leslie was also a talented painter.[18] Rejected by the Royal Air Force due to his defective hearing (possibly related to his love of shooting), he spent the war living in Bournemouth with his mother and working in an aircraft factory, and never fully recovered psychologically.[19] He had a relationship with the family's Greek maid, Maria Condos, ten years his senior, which in 1945 produced a son, Anthony Leslie Condos.[20] Leslie abandoned Maria, who raised Anthony on her own, with initial financial assistance from Louisa and enduring moral support from Margo. By 1947 Leslie had moved in with the genial Bournemouth divorcee Doris Irene Hall née Wheeler (1905–1990), who ran the local off-licence,[21] and for whom he had sometimes done beer deliveries.[22] They married in 1952 and by year's end had emigrated to Kenya, where Leslie was to manage a farm.[23] They fled the country June 1968 "with only the clothes they stood up in and £75 between them", after Leslie, lately working as bursar at a school near Mombasa, was accused of defrauding a female acquaintance of her savings.[24] (Margo refers to earlier possible episodes of dishonesty.)[25] By the late 1970s Leslie and Doris were living near Notting Hill Gate in London.[26] At the height of summer in 1982 Leslie died of a heart attack in a pub not far from his home while taking a break from his final job as janitor at a block of flats in Marble Arch.[27][28] After his failure with Anthony Condos, Leslie developed a warm relationship with Doris's son Michael Hall (b. 1933) and Douglas Botting suggests that his wife and stepson were the only people to mourn his passing.[29] Mary Condos, who had never ceased to love Leslie,[30] was lost to Alzheimer's disease, and none of his siblings attended the funeral.[31]
* Margaret Isabel Mabel (Margo) Durrell (b. 4 May 1919, Kurseong, Bengal, today West Bengal;[32][33] d. 16 January 2007, Bournemouth, Dorset[34]) She had two brief marriages. The first was in 1940 to Imperial Airways flight engineer John N. Breeze, known as Jack, whom she had met on Corfu.[35] Jack was immediately posted to South Africa, and the couple spent the war years gradually advancing north to Mozambique, then Ethiopia, then Egypt, before returning to Britain at war's end.[36] Along the way they had two sons, Gerry and Nicholas. In 1947, after their divorce, Margo used her inheritance from her father to establish a boarding house across the street from her mother's house, with a view to supporting herself and her sons. Her guests included musicians, and her second marriage in 1951 was to Malcolm Lawrence Duncan (1930–1981), known as Mac, who at the time combined his National Service as a corporal in the Life Guards stationed at Bovington with evenings as a member of Ron Weldon’s band in Bournemouth, playing jazz trombone.[37][38] Duncan went on to have some success as a jazz musician, playing with Ken Colyer and visiting Americans such as Red Allen and George Lewis, as well as leading his own bands.[38] The couple's son Malcolm died shortly after his birth in 1952, and by 1954 Margo and Mac had separated.[39] Margo describes her life as a single mother, member of the Durrell clan, and boarding-housekeeper in Whatever Happened to Margo?, which was published in 1995, several decades after she wrote it. The Times described it as a "charming book" with "the full quota of the Durrell wit".[40]
* Gerald Malcolm Durrell (b. 7 January 1925, Jamshedpur, Bihar and Orissa, today Jharkhand;[41] d. 30 January 1995, St Helier, Jersey[42]). A naturalist,writer, television host and conservationist. Gerald founded the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust. His first wife, Jacqueline Sonia Wolfenden (b. 1929), is an author, naturalist and television host; the couple divorced in 1979. His second wife, Lee McGeorge (b. 1949), is an author, naturalist and honorary director of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust.

## References

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1. ^ British India Office, Births and Baptisms, 1712-1965, FamilySearch. Retrieved 9 August 2024.
2. ^ India Births and Baptisms, 1786-1947, FamilySearch. Retrieved 9 August 2024.
3. ^ India Deaths and Burials, 1719-1948, FamilySearch. Retrieved 9 August 2024
4. ^ Samuel Amos Durrell, registered at birth as Samuel Stearn Durrell, was the son of Suffolk farmer Samuel Stearn, with whom his mother, Mahala Durrell née Tye, had a relationship after her husband, William Durrell, committed suicide. See Douglas Botting, Gerald Durrell, The Authorised Biography (London: Harper Collins, 1999), p. 6.
5. ^ Botting, p. 4.
6. ^ Gordon Bowker, Through the Dark Labyrinth, A Biography of Lawrence Durrell (New York: St Martin's Press, 1997) p. 5.
7. ^ Botting, p. 4.
8. ^ Bowker, p. 5.
9. ^ British India Office, Births and Baptisms, 1712-1965, FamilySearch. Retrieved 8 August 2024.
10. ^ India Births and Baptisms, 1786-1947, FamilySearch. Retrieved 8 August 2024.
11. ^ "Lawrence Durrell", The Times, 9 November 1990, p. 16.
12. ^ British India Office, Births and Baptisms, 1712-1965 , FamilySearch. Retrieved 8 August 2024.
13. ^ India Births and Baptisms, 1786-1947, FamilySearch. Retrieved 8 August 2024.
14. ^ India Deaths and Burials, 1719-1948, FamilySearch. Retrieved 8 August 2024.
15. ^ British India Office, Births and Baptisms, 1712-1965, FamilySearch. Retrieved 8 August 2024.
16. ^ India Births and Baptisms, 1786-1947, FamilySearch. Retrieved 8 August 2024.
17. ^ England and Wales Death Registration Index, 1837-2007, FamilySearch. Retrieved 8 August 2024.
18. ^ Botting, p. 102.
19. ^ Botting, p. 77 and 103.
20. ^ Botting, p. 103.
21. ^ Botting, p. 107.
22. ^ Margaret Durrell, Whatever Happened to Margo? (London: André Deutsch, 1995), p. 19.
23. ^ Botting, p. 222.
24. ^ Botting, p. 342–343.
25. ^ Whatever Happened to Margo?, pp.18–19.
26. ^ Bowker, p. 394.
27. ^ Botting, p. 512.
28. ^ Bowker, p. 394–395.
29. ^ Botting, p. 512.
30. ^ Botting, p. 104.
31. ^ Botting, p. 512.
32. ^ British India Office, Births and Baptisms, 1712-1965, FamilySearch. Retrieved 8 August 2024.
33. ^ India Births and Baptisms, 1786-1947, FamilySearch. Retrieved 8 August 2024.
34. ^ "Durrell death marks the end of an era", Jersey Evening Post, 1 February 2007. Retrieved 8 August 2024.
35. ^ Botting, p. 72.
36. ^ Botting, p. 76.
37. ^ Botting, p. 186.
38. ^ a b Profile: Mac Duncan, Sandy Brown Jazz. Retrieved 8 August 2024.
39. ^ Bowker, p. 220.
40. ^ "New in Paperback", The Times, 10 August 1996, supplement p.11.
41. ^ Botting, p. 3.
42. ^ Botting, p. 598.

* v
* t
* e

Gerald Durrell

Books written|

* The Overloaded Ark
* Three Singles to Adventure
* The Bafut Beagles
* The New Noah
* The Drunken Forest
* My Family and Other Animals
* A Zoo in My Luggage
* The Whispering Land
* Menagerie Manor
* The Donkey Rustlers
* Birds, Beasts, and Relatives
* The Talking Parcel
* The Garden of the Gods
* The Mockery Bird
* The Fantastic Flying Journey
* The Fantastic Dinosaur Adventure

TV series|

* Catch Me a Colobus
* The Stationary Ark
* Ark on the Move

Dramatizations|

* My Family and Other Animals (TV series, 1987)
* My Family and Other Animals (TV film, 2005)
* The Durrells (TV series, 2016-2019)

Durrell family|

* Lawrence Samuel Durrell (father)
* Louisa Durrell (mother)
* Lawrence Durrell (brother)
* Margaret Durrell (sister)
* Jacquie Durrell (1st wife)
* Lee McGeorge Durrell (2nd wife)

Institutions founded|

* Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust
* EcoHealth Alliance
* Durrell Wildlife Park
* Les Augrès Manor
* Mauritian Wildlife Foundation
* Madagascar Fauna and Flora Group
* Wildlife Preservation Canada
* World Conference on Breeding Endangered Species in Captivity as an Aid to their Survival

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