My Family and Other Animals

Gerald Durrell was ten years old when his widowed mother moved the family to the Greek island of Corfu — and the five years that followed were, he later insisted, the happiest of his life. My Family and Other Animals is the memoir of those years: the animals he collected (scorpions, geckos, owls, rose beetles, a pigeon, tortoises of every variety), the unorthodox lessons of his tutor Theodore, and the continuous comedy of his family’s attempts to maintain English respectability in a Mediterranean setting that had other ideas entirely.

Published in 1956 and never out of print, it is one of the most purely pleasurable memoirs in the English language — funny in every chapter, deeply affectionate about the natural world, and written with a precision of observation that reflects the extraordinary naturalist Durrell would become. The descriptions of Corfu’s landscape and light remain among the finest in travel writing.

This new Penguin Modern Classics edition introduces one of Britain’s most beloved books to a new generation. Essential reading for anyone who loves nature, comedy, or the Mediterranean. Published by Penguin Modern Classics.