Brothers Gerald and Lawrence Durrell have been a pleasant enigma to me  since my adolescent years, when I spent endless days immersed in Gerald's books. I didn't know anything then about his brother, Lawrence. I knew Gerald had a brother—two brothers actually—Lawrence (always called Larry in the books) and Leslie— and a sister, Margo, but I took them as a funny addition to Gerald's stories, and there was lots and lots of fun there. Much later I delved deep into the Durrell's history and was even more fascinated by them all.

Lawrence Samuel Durrell, a traveling engineer, and Louisa Florence Durrell had four children, all born in India during the British Raj (British India). Mr. Durrell died in 1928 and Louisa took the three youngest (Leslie, Margo and Gerald) to England. Their eldest son Lawrence had already been sent to boarding school there. They all lived on the widow's pension but it was increasingly difficult to support themselves in England, so in 1935 the family moved to the Greek island of Corfu.They spent nearly five years there and Gerald Durrell set some of his best books there, taking us through slightly nostalgic descriptions of the island's flora and fauna, while introducing his family to the reader:

My Family and Other Animals

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Birds, Beasts and Relatives

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Garden of the Gods

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the time of their move, Lawrence (Larry) was twenty-three, Leslie was nineteen, Margo was eighteen, and Gerald, the youngest, was a fragile and impressionable ten-year-old. Gerald Durrell claims that all the anecdotes about the Island of Corfu and its inhabitants are perfectly true and describes Corfu's life like a lavish comic opera.

Lawrence Durrell also wrote a memoir dedicated to Corfu:

Prospero's Cell: A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corcyra

 

 

 

 

 

While it gives a deeper understanding of what makes up modern Greece, Prospero's Cell narrates the pre-World War II Corfu and is very poetic. It shares that specific nostalgia expressed in Gerald's books, but the idyllic days there were also very productive and defining for the young author. Living on Corfu with his first wife, Nancy, Lawrence found his original voice as a writer and remained always connected with the Greek Islands. Later in his career, Lawrence Durrell wrote the remarkable Bitter Lemons: Life on a Mediterranean Island—an autobiographical book about the years he spent on Cyprus.

Bitter Lemons of Cyprus