[LMB] (chat) Durrell -- the good one...

[James Nicoll]

On Fri, 4 Apr 2008, Lois McMaster Bujold wrote:

> [LMB] (chat) Durrell -- the good one...
> James Nicoll jdnicoll at panix.com
> Fri Apr 4 05:17:39 BST 2008
>
>
> On Thu, 3 Apr 2008, Lois McMaster Bujold wrote:
>
> > Ah ha --
> >
> >    I just found Masterpiece Theater/WGBH had done a dramatization of
> > naturalist Gerald Durrell's little classic _My Family And Other
> > Animals_, a memoir of his pre-WWII sojourn on Crete in his early teens.
> >  A favorite book of my youth -- it's survived I don't know how many
> > moves.  The adaptation, obtained (as usual) via Netflix, was
> > delightful.  Recommended.
> >
> >    The sunshine looked darned fine, too, sigh.  Now I shall have to dig
> > out the book and read it again.
> >
> Is this the part where I plug the biography?
>
> *** Please do.  What biography?
>
GERALD DURRELL by Douglass Botting (Carrol & Graff, 1999)

I will warn you up front that not everything in there will make you think 
kindly of Durrell, particularly his treatment of his first wife 
Jacqueline.

I can't recall if the book mentions Leslie Durrell's affair with the 
family's Greek maid or how the family - including Leslie - pretty much cut 
her dead once she had Leslie's child.