The Durrells: The Story of a Family

Ulster University English professor Bradford (The Man Who Wasn’t There) uncovers the truth behind the Durrells, an eccentric British expat family, in this revealing biography. After the death of her husband, Louisa Durrell and her four children decamped to the Greek island of Corfu in 1935. Her youngest son, Gerald, mythologized their time there in a series of memoirs, beginning with My Family and Other Animals in 1956, that turned the family into celebrities and inspired TV shows and films. Bradford reveals how Gerald, a zoologist who resented writing and leaned on it to support his real passion of working with animals, strayed far from the facts in his portrayal of the family. He left out, for example, “that most of the indigenous population treated them with aghast fascination, and expatriate Britons saw them as a disgrace to the homeland.” Bradford also notes that Louisa was a severe alcoholic and that Gerald’s brother Lawrence, a writer of experimental novels, was a serial domestic abuser. Among other insights into the family’s dynamics, Bradford notes that the brothers “matched one another in terms of global fame but who were utterly antithetical in what they represented and wrote.” Fans of the Durrells will be intrigued and aghast by this demystifying tell-all. (Sept.)