2025 is the centenary year of the birth of author and conservationist Gerald Durrell. In this episode I am discussing a newly published book of previously unseen writing by Gerry Durrell, titled ‘Myself and Other Animals’ edited together by his widow Dr Lee Durrell.
Margo Durrell
For a bit of disclosure, I am related to Gerry Durrell via my grandmother, Margo Durrell, as satirised in his books, including My Family & Other Animals. This new posthumous autobiography provides a vivid flashback to the animal obsessed boy, riddled with curiosity and affection for the natural world. However, in this new book, Myself & Other Animals, a serious Gerry also emerges– reflective, at moments melancholy and deeply enraged by the destruction we humans are inflicting on the Earth. Despite his writing these texts in the 1980’s and early 90’s, his commentary is as fresh and relevant today as it would have been then.
Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust
Whilst doing work experience at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, also known as Jersey Zoo, 35 years ago I recall eating my sandwiches in a small pavilion watching a slideshow and listening to the following recorded quote read aloud by Gerry:
“The world is as delicate and as complicated as a spider’s web, and like a spider’s web, if you touch one thread, you send shudders running through all the other threads that make up the web. But we’re not just touching the web, we’re tearing great holes in it . . .”
Gerald Durrell, Catch Me A Colobus, 1972
The quote is from his earlier book, Catch Me A Colobus, published in 1972. Although it stayed with me, I didn’t comprehend it’s true depth and meaning until many years later, by which time Gerry was long gone and his nightmare visions of what we are doing to this planet are more advanced.
Hatchwell Antiques, Kings Road, London, UK
That’s not to say there is nothing to do – if anything there is far more to do. In this conversation with Lee, we traverse many topics including Gerry’s inner world, his enormous empathy for all living beings, including people, and of course, the fabulous work today of the Durrell Trust, that has worked with over 100 critically endangered species in captive breeding programmes and has rewilding projects going on all over the world, including a young project underway in Scotland.
The book is vintage Durrell, combining the wonder of nature with the lampooning of family members, while also displaying sage-like foresight regarding the fragility of our existence on this planet.
Interview by Nick Breeze, writer and podcaster, and author of ‘COPOUT– How governments have failed the people on climate‘
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