On January 7, 1925, in the family of a British civil engineer who lived and worked in a small town of British India (the colony of Great Britain), a fourth child was born, named Gerald Malcolm Durrell. After the death of the head of the family in 1928, the mother and children moved to England, where she lived for five years. In 1933, she again changed her place of residence, moving to the island of Corfu, where by that time Gerald’s older brother, Lawrence George Durrell, a famous English novelist
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On January 7, 1925, in the family of a British civil engineer who lived and worked in a small town of British India (the colony of Great Britain), a fourth child was born, named Gerald Malcolm Durrell. After the death of the head of the family in 1928, the mother and children moved to England, where she lived for five years. In 1933, she again changed her place of residence, moving to the island of Corfu, where by that time Gerald’s older brother, Lawrence George Durrell, a famous English novelist and poet, lived.
After the outbreak of World War II, Louise Florence Durrell, along with her younger sons Gerald and Leslie, returned to the capital of England.
The classical education due to the death of his father and constant moving Gerald Malcolm Durrell never received, but this was more than compensated for the influence that his home teacher - naturalist Theodor Stefanides had on the young man. It was from him that the future zoologist and animal writer with world fame received the first knowledge about zoology.
In England, Gerald worked first in the London zoological store "Aquarium", and then settled in Bedfordshire Zoo Whipsnade, where he received his professional training as a researcher of wildlife.
After the war, Gerald returns to his historical homeland – to the Indian town of Jamshedpur. Having received his share of his paternal inheritance in 1947, the young zoologist undertook a series of expeditions to British Cameroon and British Guinea. However, these expeditions do not bring financial success, and in the early 50s, a young ambitious scientist who spent his inheritance on research of African fauna remains not only without work, but also without means of subsistence.
Had it not been for the advice of Lawrence’s older brother, who had already made a living as a writer, to try to put his adventures on paper on expeditions, the world might never have known about Gerald Durrell’s writing talent. As expected by Lawrence, the first story “Hunting the hairy frog” caused rave reviews of the British, known for their love of animals.
The royalties for the first two full-length books (The Overloaded Ark and Three Tickets to Edvencher) allowed Gerald to organize a new zoological expedition, now to South America. From now on, the expeditions were replaced by one another, resulting in a fascinating narrative on the pages of new books, and the fees from their publication allowed Gerald Malcolm Durrell to once again go to the most exotic corners to meet with the animals he so adored. Just in his long life (and lived a naturalist writer 71 years, died of blood poisoning in 1995) Darrell has written more than three dozen books and directed 35 films about wild animals.
Darrell is not only a talented writer and popularizer of zoology. In 1959, he created a zoo on the island of Jersey, where he was engaged in the breeding of endangered species of animals and their subsequent settlement in the wild. Thanks to this activity, it was possible to preserve many species that were put on the verge of destruction. In 1999, the Jersey Zoo was renamed Durrell Wildlife Park.