Remembering Gerald Durrell at 100

“I will be remembering Gerald Durrell at 100 which is what he would have been yesterday.  I devoured Gerald Durrell’s books as a child.  I read the lot, several times over.  I fell in love with nature and our environment long before I fell in love with farming.  Our family farm was pretty unintensively managed.  My life has gone full circle and now I am fighting for nature and farming.”

{Earth and Leaf Editorial}

Remembering Gerald Durrell at 100

As a toddler, Gerald Durrell was on a walk when he peered over the side of the road and spotted two creatures. “They were gently sliding over each other in what looked like a dance. They were a pale coffee colour with black, ridged stripes. They were glutinous and beautiful”.

This rather flattering description of two slugs writhing in a ditch opens a new collection of writings by the beloved conservationist, who died in 1995 and would have turned 100 today, and it sets the tone for the book: all animals should be considered miraculous, conventional looks aside.

Myself and Other Animals – a riff on the title of My Family and Other Animals, Durrell’s 1956 account of his childhood on Corfu – traces the origins of the naturalist’s lifelong rapture with animals, combining his unfinished memoirs with extracts from his published books, articles, radio broadcasts, introductions to texts by other writers, and letters to his family.

The book “is an attempt to let Gerry’s life unfold for the reader, and for the reader to get to know him”, says his wife Lee, now honorary director of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, which was founded by Durrell in 1963 and has since helped more than 100 species recover from the brink of extinction.  Remembering Gerald Durrell at 100.

Further reading from Earth and Leaf . . .

Remembering Gerald Durrell at 100, here is the link to his organisation https://www.durrell.org/

Have a look at our Shepherds of the Trees project