The Durrells The Story of a Family

About this book

A variously tragic tale of escapism and assimilation, Richard Bradford's The Durrells explores the truth behind the image.

The Durrells are probably the most celebrated literary family of the 20th century. Gerald turned them into celebrities with his tripartite memoir, beginning with My Family and Other Animals (1956), which told of his experiences with his widowed mother, Louisa and three siblings during their time in 1930s Corfu. We know of the Durrells from their own writings and from the image of them created by TV, film and biographical accounts of specific figures. What we do not know is the truth.

Using previously unpublished material from the Jersey Archive, Richard Bradford unravels the lives of the famous four children of the Corfu era – Larry, Gerry, Margo and Lesli – as they find themselves geographically and emotionally divided amongst a backdrop of imperial decline and unrest. The children of moneyed colonialists, they were already used to being treated with aghast fascination by the island's locals, and by expatriate Britons as a disgrace to the homeland.

Yet their story goes beyond the Ionian Sea, and The Durrells delves into the complex social and political circumstances in which the family lived, with seemingly constant threats of war and endangerment to both themselves and their natural environment.

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
A Note on Sources

A Strange History
A Dysfunctional Family
All Over the Place
Larry in Egypt
The Meeting of Opposites
The Rise of Gerry
Larry: Spying Again
Animal Farm
France
Reunion at the Manor
Larry in Hell
Gerry's Hopelessness
Ghislaine, Among Others
Gerry: A New Life
Larry: His Closing Chapter
The Real Gerry

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Biography

Richard Bradford is Research Professor in English at Ulster University and Visiting Professor at the University of Avignon. He has published more than thirty books, including eight well-reviewed trade biographies of writers. He has written for the Spectator and the Sunday Times and has been interviewed on his work for various BBC Radio Arts programmes, as well as appearing on the Channel 4 series Writers in their Own Words.