My Animals and Other Family

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Each chapter in the book covers one of the stages or milestones of her life, and focuses on the animal that played a key role at the stage. I liked the format of the book, as well as her writing style. It's very well written, fluid and with just the right amount of detail to keep you engaged. I loved to see her bond with her brother, and the constant support of her mother. I didn't like her father too much, who seems to be a little self-absorbed and very chauvinistic. But her grandmother comes across as a really mean person who is particularly scathing to her, and I didn't like her at all. George discovered that by seasoning a series of unpalatable facts with a sprig of zoology and a sprinkle of completely irrelevant detail, he could get me interested. Thus I became conversant with some historical data which, to the best of my knowledge, have never been recorded before. Breathlessly, history lesson by history lesson, I followed Hannibal’s progress over the Alps. His reason for attempting such a feat, and what he intended to do on the other side, were details that scarcely worried me. No, my interest in what I considered to be a very badly planned expedition lay in the fact that I knew the name of each and every elephant . I also knew that Hannibal had appointed a special man not only to feed and look after the elephants, but to give them hot-water bottles when the weather got cold . This interesting fact seems to have escaped most serious historians...The lectures were attended by Gerry, his dog Roger, Achilles the tortoise and Quasimodo the pigeon. The four musketeers doted on the juicy big grapes of Corfu. Achilles loved the wild strawberries the best though.

This book is the first in Gerald Durrell’s Corfu trilogy. It’s a memoir of his time as a youngster spent on that enchanting Greek island along with his mother and siblings. It highlights his love for wildlife, his affinity with the natural world. We get a glimpse of this conservationist and writer’s first encounters with the animals he grew to cherish and protect on a professional level. He tells his story with clarity and humor. His family gets mixed up in the stories along the way, and this just added to the charm of the book. I love the way he explains his intentions in the introduction: The book ends when Clare is 19, and I dearly hope writes another - I'd love to read the same deftly-handled, brilliantly written approach to her broadcasting career. The de-rodentification of Rat Island in St. Lucia by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust to create a sanctuary for the Saint Lucia whiptail lizard on the lines of Praslin Island has caused an official change in name for Rat Island. It is in the process of being renamed Durrell Island. Or which loony family would not go berserk on finding water snakes in their bath tubs, or the innards of a tortoise strewn on their garden path one hot afternoon. Claire Balding is known for sports broadcasting – initially that was horse racing but now she commentates on all sorts of sports, especially the Olympics & Paralympics.

Gerald Durrell just loved animals; any shape any size, big or small. The criterion was ‘just be an animal’.

This book is slightly different from his usual tales about zoos and animal collecting, though - humans actually take up a large part of it. As Durrell says in the introduction: Split infinitives was a popular vice for authors such as Daniel Defoe, Benjamin Franklin, William Wordsworth, Abraham Lincoln, George Eliot, Henry James, and Willa Cather. Strawberry pink, to be exact. The colour of the first house the Durrells rented on Corfu. The villa had an air of pink-faced determination. The way Gerald Durrell describes them is unbeatable. He casts a spell on you not only when he portrays quite spectacular species but also quite prosaic ones.Una narrazione talmente romanzesca che, spesso, leggendo si fatica a ricordarsi la vera natura del testo. The Gerald Durrell Memorial Funds, launched in 1996, are granted in the field of conservation by the Wildlife Trust every year. Questo è l'unico difetto che sono riuscito a trovare nel libro. Devo ammettere che ho saltato alcune pagine, cosa che faccio molto raramente quando leggo.