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My Family and Other Animals is the bewitching account of a rare and
magical childhood on the island of Corfu by treasured British
conservationist Gerald Durrell, beautifully repackaged as part of
the Penguin Essentials range. 'What we all need,' said Larry, 'is
sunshine...a country where we can grow.' 'Yes, dear, that would be
nice,' agreed Mother, not really listening. 'I had a letter from
George this morning - he says Corfu's wonderful. Why don't we pack
up and go to Greece?' 'Very well, dear, if you like,' said Mother
unguardedly. Escaping the ills of the British climate, the Durrell
family - acne-ridden Margo, gun-toting Leslie, bookworm Lawrence
and budding naturalist Gerry, along with their long-suffering
mother and Roger the dog - take off for the island of Corfu. But
the Durrells find that, reluctantly, they must share their various
villas with a menagerie of local fauna - among them scorpions,
geckos, toads, bats and butterflies. Recounted with immense humour
and charm My Family and Other Animals is a wonderful account of a
rare, magical childhood. 'Durrell has an uncanny knack of
discovering human as well as animal eccentricities' Sunday
Telegraph 'A bewitching book' Sunday Times Gerald Durrell was born
in Jamshedpur, India, in 1925. He returned to England in 1928
before settling on the island of Corfu with his family. In 1945 he
joined the staff of Whipsnade Park as a student keeper, and in 1947
he led his first animal-collecting expedition to the Cameroons. He
later undertook numerous further expeditions, visiting Paraguay,
Argentina, Sierra Leone, Mexico, Mauritius, Assam and Madagascar.
His first television programme, Two in the Bush which documented
his travels to New Zealand, Australia and Malaya was made in 1962;
he went on to make seventy programmes about his trips around the
world. In 1959 he founded the Jersey Zoological Park, and in 1964
he founded the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust. He was awarded
the OBE in 1982. Encouraged to write about his life's work by his
brother, Durrell published his first book, The Overloaded Ark, in
1953. It soon became a bestseller and he went on to write
thirty-six other titles, including My Family and Other Animals, The
Bafut Beagles, Encounters with Animals, The Drunken Forest, A Zoo
in My Luggage, The Whispering Land, Menagerie Manor, The Amateur
Naturalist and The Aye-Aye and I. Gerald Durrell died in 1995.
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Tarka the Otter (DVD)
Peter Bennett, Edward Underdown, Brenda Cavendish, John Leeson, Reg Lye, …
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R107
Discovery Miles 1 070
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Ships in 10 - 20 working days
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Set in the English countryside of the 1920s - when otter hunting
was still legal - this film follows the life of Tarka the Otter
from his birth into adulthood. We witness his close shaves, and his
struggle with a man who tries to keep our furry hero as a pet.
Durrell has an uncanny knack of discovering human as well as animal
eccentricities' Sunday Telegraph Ten-year-old Gerald doesn't know
why his older brothers and sisters complain so much. With snakes in
the bath and scorpions on the lunch table, the family home on the
Greek island of Corfu is a bit like a zoo so they should feel right
at home... Gerald joyfully pursues his interest in natural history
in the midst of an unconventional and chaotic family life - all
brilliantly retold in this very funny book.
'The sky turns the colour of a jay's eye. The sea turns a deep
royal purple. The mist lifts in quick, lithe ribbons, like a
conjuring trick. Before us lies the island...' It's 1935, and an
eccentric English family - four children, their widowed mother, and
Roger the dog - arrives on the sun-soaked shores of Corfu to start
a new life. For eleven-year-old Gerry Durrell, the extraordinary
landscape provides the perfect playground. Its exotic fauna
inspires a life-long fascination with the animal kingdom - and his
much-loved memoir My Family and Other Animals. Janys Chambers'
acclaimed stage adaptation was first seen at York Theatre Royal,
and invites other theatre companies to make ingenious and inventive
decisions, bringing to life all the inhabitants of Durrell's
cherished island - whether they walk and talk, fly and squawk,
crawl or swim or slither.
*The classic trilogy set in sun-soaked Corfu that inspired ITV's
acclaimed TV series The Durrells* Three classic tales of childhood
on an island paradise - My Family and Other Animals, Birds, Beasts
and Relatives and The Garden of the Gods by Gerald Durrell - are
available in a single edition for the first time in The Corfu
Trilogy. Just before the Second World War the Durrell family
decamped to the glorious, sun-soaked island of Corfu where the
youngest of the four children, ten-year-old Gerald, discovered his
passion for animals: toads and tortoises, bats and butterflies,
scorpions and octopuses. Through glorious silver-green olive groves
and across brilliant-white beaches Gerry pursued his obsession . .
. causing hilarity and mayhem in his ever-tolerant family. 'A
delightful book full of simple, well-known things: cicadas in the
olive groves, lamp fishing at night, the complexities of fish and
animals - but, above all, childhood moulded by these things' New
York Times
My Family and Other Animals is the bewitching account of a rare and
magical childhood on the island of Corfu by treasured British
conservationist Gerald Durrell. Escaping the ills of the British
climate, the Durrell family - acne-ridden Margo, gun-toting Leslie,
bookworm Lawrence and budding naturalist Gerry, along with their
long-suffering mother and Roger the dog - take off for the island
of Corfu. But the Durrells find that, reluctantly, they must share
their various villas with a menagerie of local fauna - among them
scorpions, geckos, toads, bats and butterflies. Recounted with
immense humour and charm My Family and Other Animals is a wonderful
account of a rare, magical childhood. 'Durrell has an uncanny knack
of discovering human as well as animal eccentricities' Sunday
Telegraph 'A bewitching book' Sunday Times
The follow up to My Family and Other Animals and the second book in
The Corfu Trilogy, the beloved books that inspired ITV's television
series The Durrells. In this second collection of tales concerning
the Durrell family on the island of Corfu, young Gerry continues to
be captivated by the fascinating flora and fauna of their adopted
home - much to the bemusement and upset of his long suffering
siblings and mother. Whether it's lamp fishing by night or roving
the countryside with his mentor Theodore, Gerry encounters
intoxicated hedgehogs, tarantulas, dung beetles, water spiders and
other animals, some of which become the family's very unwanted
pets. 'A wild and amusing chronicle' Daily Express 'This book, an
evocation of a budding naturalist's life as a boy on Corfu, will
delight many readers, even those who can't stand spiders...'
Evening Standard 'Delightful, charming, funny' The Times
A new standalone edition of the third book in the trilogy that inspired TV's The Durrells.
Just before the Second World War the Durrell family decamped to the glorious, sun-soaked island of Corfu where the youngest of the four children, ten-year-old Gerald, discovered his passion for animals: toads and tortoises, bats and butterflies, scorpions and octopuses. Through glorious silver-green olive groves and across brilliant-white beaches Gerry pursued his obsession . . . causing hilarity and mayhem in his ever-tolerant family.
Volume two in The Corfu Trilogy, now the inspiration for The
Durrells in Corfu on PBS Masterpiece Part coming-of-age
autobiography and part nature guide, Gerald Durrell's dazzling
sequel to My Family and Other Animals is based on his boyhood on
Corfu, from 1933 to 1939. Originally published in 1969 but long out
of print, Birds, Beasts, and Relatives is filled with charming
observations, amusing anecdotes, boyhood memories, and childlike
wonder.
David Attenborough, Dion Leonard (Finding Gobi), Dervla Murphy and
Brian Jackman are just four of the authors whose work features in
this new anthology from Bradt focusing on true stories about
travelling with animals. In Beastly Journeys, there are 46 tales of
extraordinary animal travel experiences, from hilarious holidays
with pets to journeys on which wild animals somehow came along for
the ride, including: David Attenborough tries to get an armadillo
through Paraguayan customs; adventurer Ash Dykes takes a white
cockerel to Maromokotro to ward off evil spirits; Mike Gerrard
shares a car journey from Belsize Park to Canvey Island with a
python; Brian Jackman rides, walks and swims with Abu the elephant;
Bradt New Travel Writer of the Year Dom Tulett rows with a
kingfisher; and John Rendall travels to Africa with Christian, the
lion he bought at Harrods and raised in west London. Also included
is a brand new piece of writing from ultramarathon runner Dion
Leonard about his experience with Gobi, the stray dog who
accompanied him for 80 miles over the treacherous Tian Shian
mountains. A mix of new, previously unpublished writers and old
favourites are included, with extracts from writers such as Mark
Shand (Travels on my Elephant), Dervla Murphy (Eight Feet in the
Andes) and Robert Louis Stevenson (Travels with a Donkey), not to
mention Gerald Durrell, 19th-century explorer Isabella Bird and
renowned publisher Michael Joseph. Compelling, engaging,
surprising, humorous and entertaining. if this book proves one
thing it's that travel with animals is every bit as unpredictable
as you would expect it to be.
My Family and Other Animals is the bewitching account of a rare and
magical childhood on the island of Corfu by treasured British
conservationist Gerald Durrell. This tv tie in edition coincides
with ITV's six part television series The Durrells. Escaping the
ills of the British climate, the Durrell family - acne-ridden
Margo, gun-toting Leslie, bookworm Lawrence and budding naturalist
Gerry, along with their long-suffering mother and Roger the dog -
take off for the island of Corfu. But the Durrells find that,
reluctantly, they must share their various villas with a menagerie
of local fauna - among them scorpions, geckos, toads, bats and
butterflies. Recounted with immense humour and charm My Family and
Other Animals is a wonderful account of a rare, magical childhood.
'Durrell has an uncanny knack of discovering human as well as
animal eccentricities' Sunday Telegraph 'A bewitching book' Sunday
Times
'In the gloom it came along the branches towards me, its round,
hypnotic eyes blazing, its spoon-like ears turning to and fro
independently like radar dishes . . . it was Lewis Carroll's
Jabberwocky come to life . . . one of the most incredible creatures
I had ever been privileged to meet.' The fourth largest island in
the world, Madagascar is home to woodlice the size of golf balls,
moths the size of Regency fans and the Aye-Aye, a type of lemur
held by local superstion to be an omen of death. But when Gerald
Durrell visited the island, the destruction of the forests meant
that the Aye-Aye and many other creatures were in danger of
extinction. Told with his unique sense of humour and inimitable
charm, Gerald Durrell's The Aye Aye and I is the final adventure
from one of Britain's best loved conservationists.
The first book Gerald Durrell's Corfu Trilogy: a bewitching account
of a rare and magical childhood on the island of Corfu, now the
inspiration for The Durrells in Corfu on Masterpiece PBS When the
unconventional Durrell family can no longer endure the damp, gray
English climate, they do what any sensible family would do: sell
their house and relocate to the sunny Greek isle of Corfu. My
Family and Other Animals was intended to embrace the natural
history of the island but ended up as a delightful account of
Durrell's family's experiences, from the many eccentric hangers-on
to the ceaseless procession of puppies, toads, scorpions, geckoes,
ladybugs, glowworms, octopuses, bats, and butterflies into their
home.
The inspiration behind ITV's hit family drama, The Durrells. My
Family and Other Animals is Gerald Durrell's hilarious account of
five years in his childhood spent living with his family on the
island of Corfu. With snakes, scorpions, toads, owls and geckos
competing for space with one bookworm brother and another who's
gun-mad, as well as an obsessive sister, young Gerald has an awful
lot of natural history to observe. This richly detailed,
informative and riotously funny memoir of eccentric family life is
a twentieth-century classic. Part of the Macmillan Collector's
Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics
with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books
make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition
features an afterword by Peter Olney, former Keeper of Birds at the
London Zoo, and a distinguished ornithologist who was awarded the
Zoological Society of London's Silver Medal in 2003.
'I once travelled back from Africa on a ship with an Irish captain
who did not like animals. This was unfortunate, because most of my
luggage consisted of about two hundred odd cages of assorted
wildlife . . .' Gerald Durrell's accounts of the animals he
encountered on his travels were some of the first widely shared
descriptions of the world's most extraordinary animals. Moving from
the West Coast of Africa to the northern tip of South America - and
elsewhere - Durrell observes the courtships, wars and characters of
a variety of creatures, from birds of paradise, to ants and
anteaters, among others.
'When you have a large collection of animals to transport from one
end of the world to the other you cannot, as a lot of people seem
to think, just hoist them aboard the nearest ship and set off with
a gay wave of your hand.' Gerald Durrell and his wife are the proud
owners of a small zoo on the island of Jersey. But there's one
thing that's better than a small zoo - a bigger one! So Durrell
heads off to South America to collect more animals. Along windswept
Patagonian shores and in Argentine tropical forests, he encounters
a range of animals from penguins to elephant seals. But as always,
he is drawn to those rare and interesting creatures which he hopes
will thrive and breed in captivity . . . Told with enthusiasm and
without sentimentality, Gerald Durrell's The Whispering Land is an
often hilarious but always inspiring foray into the South American
wilds.
'For many years I had wanted to start a zoo . . . any reasonable
person smitten with an ambition of this sort would have secured the
zoo first and obtained the animals afterwards. but throughout my
life I have rarely if ever achieved what I wanted by tackling it in
a logical fashion.' A Zoo in My Luggage is Gerald Durrell's account
of his attempt to set up his own zoo, after years spent gathering
animals for other zoos. Journeying to Cameroon, he and his wife
collected numerous mammals, birds and reptiles, including
Cholmondely the chimpanzee and Bug-eye the bush-baby. But their
problems really began when they attempted to return with their
exotic menagerie. Not only had they to get them safely home to
Britain but they also had to find somewhere able and - most of all
- willing to house them. Told with wit and a zest for all things
furry and feathered, Gerald Durrell's A Zoo in My Luggage is a
brilliant account of how a pioneer of wildlife preservation came to
found a new type of zoo.
The weather in England that summer had been so awful that Gerald's
mother sold the family house and took her children to live on the
Mediterranean island of Corfu. Between lessons, the ten-year-old
Gerald was free to walk round the sunny island and discover the
wonderful people and animals living there. This is the story of
Gerald's adventures with the fascinating animals of Corfu, and, of
course, with his surprising family and their friends.
Gerald Durrell, director and owner of Jersey Zoo, was
internationally famous for his amusing books about collecting wild
animals. The Overloaded Ark, his first, remains his funniest book.
It describes an expedition to the remote territory of the Cameroons
in West Africa, before independence. 'A delightful book . . . You
can feel his bush-shirt sticking to his back . . . Bagging a
monitor, smoking out a Pangolin (scaly anteater), celebrating the
capture of the rare Angwantibo (small lemur), bird liming for Giant
Kingfishers on the warm, milky waters of Lake Soden: he
communicates every detail of his experiences with just the right
degree of zest.' New Statesman
Celia Imrie and Toby Jones star in this BBC Radio 4 dramatisation
of Gerald Durrell's much-loved comic gem. My Family and Other
Animals is the classic tale of naturalist Gerald Durrell's magical
1930s childhood on pre-war Corfu. His descriptions of his eccentric
family and his encounters with the local creatures are full of
humour and charm, and the book has delighted readers of all ages
for sixty years. Ten-year-old Gerry is the youngest member of the
Durrell family, which also consists of Mother, pompous eldest son
Larry, gun-mad second son Leslie, acne-ridden sister Margo, and
Roger the dog. When they arrive in Corfu, Gerry is thrilled to find
a paradise of exotic wildlife to be explored. Soon he is embarking
on natural history expeditions, swimming in the clearblue sea and
befriending the island's inhabitants.Gerry's relatives are less
impressed with his exploits, especially when his burgeoning animal
collection sparks chaos at the family's Christmas party... With a
specially created soundtrack, this vivid adaptation takes the story
out of the studio and into the Greek wilderness that enthralled
Durrell the young naturalist. Duration: 2 hours approx.
Fans of Gerard Durrellas beloved classic "My Family and Other
Animals" and other accounts of his lifelong fascination with
members of the animal kingdom will rejoice at "The Whispering
Land," The sequel to "A Zoo in My Luggage," this is the story of
how Durrell and his wifeas zoo-building efforts at Englandas Jersey
Zoo led them and a team of helpers on an eight- month safari in
Argentina to look for South American specimens. Through windswept
Patagonian shores and tropical forests in Argentina, from ocelots
to penguins, fur seals to parrots, Durrell captures the landscape
and its inhabitants with his signature charm and humor. BACKCOVER:
aAnyone who has ever read a book by Gerald Durrell will welcome
another with whoops of joy.a
"aChicago Sunday Tribune"
aAnimals come close to being Durrellas best friends. . . . He
writes about them with style, verve, and humor.a
"aTime"
aNo one can be funnier than Mr. Durrell in relating his own
adventures or the antics of the claw and paw set.a
"aThe Christian Science Monitor"
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