Gerald Durrell (Authorised Biography): The Authorised Biography - Tapa blanda

The authorised biography of the great naturalist and conservationist Gerald Durrell, who died aged seventy in January 1995 in Jersey, where he founded the zoo he’d dreamed of as a small boy and pioneered the captive breeding of animals for conservation.

Gerald Durrell was a world-famous naturalist and popular author who wrote, in all, some thirty-seven immensely readable yarns, including the bestselling ‘My Family and Other Animals’. His other books include ‘Birds, Beasts and Relatives’, ‘The Bafut Beagles’ and ‘A Zoo in My Luggage’.

Above all, he paved the way in print for the popular presentation of the natural world on television and presented twelve series himself – the early ones, of his own expeditions. Sir David Attenborough has said: ‘He was responsible for changing people’s attitudes to zoology and changing their agenda. He showed them small animals could be as interesting as apes and elephants...He was a pioneer with a marvellous sense of humour.’

His brother was the famous writer Lawrence Durrell.

When Gerald Durrell died in 1995, at the age of seventy, he left behind an extraordinary legacy. As a pioneer animal conservationist, television personality and much-loved writer who inspired generations of readers with books like 'My Family and Other Animals', 'The Bafut Beagles', 'A Zoo in My Luggage' and 'The Amateur Naturalist', he packed a dozen lives into a single lifetime. A charismatic, passionate and above all dedicated to his crusade on behalf of animals and endangered species, he was founder of the world's leading zoos and of the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust, now renamed the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust in his honour.

"Douglas Botting is to be congratulated on 'Gerald Durrell'. He has done a magnificent job in telling the complex story of a complex person, wrinkles and all."
DAVID BELLAMY 'Literary Review'

"Douglas Botting's biography is as large in spirit as the subject himself and opens the mind to many crucial concerns."
DAVID HUGHES, 'Sunday telegraph'

"A monumental biography ... Douglas Botting is sympathetic, perfectly qualified. His book does Durrell's memory as much justice as the Jersey sanctuary where his ideals live on."
ANTHONY HOLDEN, 'Sunday Express'