Beasts in My Belfry was the first book that I ever read that was written by Gerald Durrell. What a wonderful read. I was hooked. Over the next few years I raided the public library for any books that I could find by him.
After a check on the Internet I found many sites devoted to Gerald Durrell and his life and writings, so I'll just give you a little bit of detail that I got in the front of Catch Me a Colobus.
"Gerald Malcolm Durrell OBE. Gerald Durrell was born in India in 1925. The family eventually settled on the Greek island of Corfu. As a child, Durrell kept everything from eagle owls to scorpions, which years later he documented in his best-selling book, My Family and other Animmals.
By the age of twenty-one Durrell was leading international expeditions to collect animals. He began writing stories of his escapades in 1953 in The Overloaded Ark. His 37 books have been translated into 26 languages, making him one of the most widely read authors of animal stories. Durrell also presented twelve television series, reaching a worldwide audience of 150 million viewers.
In 1959 Durrell founded his own zoo on Jersey in the English Channel Islands, dedicated to saving endangered species. The Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust maintains breeding groups of some of the world's rarest animals and has begun to return their progeny to the wild. The Trust also provides intensive training to overseas scientists and fieldworkers at the International Training Centre adjacent to the zoo. Durrell established affiliate Trusts in the United States in 1973 and in Canada in 1985.
For his outstanding contributions to conservation, Gerald Durrell received many international honours, including the Order of the Golden Ark awarded by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands in 1981. In the UK Gerald Durrell was decorated with the Order of the British Empire in 1982. When Durrell died in 1995, his zoologist wife, Dr Lee Durrell, succeeded him as Honorary Director of the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust."
HarperCollinsPublishers
You can see all of his writings by:
Here are some of interesting links to information about Gerald Durrell, his work, his books:
Alibris is worth a visit if ever you want to find any of Gerald Durrell's out of print books.
