A final posthumous work of autobiography by Gerald Durrell is set to come out at the end of the year, publisher Penguin Random House (PRH) has announced.
Drawing on a memoir that Durrell started writing before he became too ill to continue, and his unfinished book from a trip to Australia in 1969, Myself and Other Animals will bring together unpublished and previously published extracts from Durrell’s work and archives.
Durrell’s final book has been edited and introduced by his widow, Lee Durrell, and features a foreword by HRH Princess Anne. Due out in December, it will be published just ahead of what would have been the author’s 100th birthday in January.
Described by its publisher as “the unvarnished story of Durrell’s life”, Myself and Other Animals is said to contain everything “from touching family tributes to golden bats and pink pigeons”.
“I am thrilled that these new Gerald Durrell stories will see the light of day,” said Lee Durrell. “Gerry did not just talk and write about conservation: he lived and breathed it. His mission was simply stated: to save species from extinction. I hope Myself and Other Animals will draw readers back to his work, and to the mission propelling every word he set down on paper during his lifetime.”
Greg Clowes, commissioning editor at Viking, the imprint of PRH publishing the book, said it is “an immense pleasure” to work on this title. “Gerald Durrell remains a true national treasure whose natural charm and control with the English language was unsurpassable,” he said.
Durrell, the youngest brother of novelist Lawrence Durrell, was born in Jamshedpur, India, in 1925. He returned to England in 1928 before moving to Corfu with his family. In 1945 he joined the staff of Whipsnade zoo, near Dunstable in Bedfordshire, as a student keeper, and in 1947 he led his first overseas animal-collecting expedition. He went on numerous further expeditions, to countries including Paraguay, Argentina, Sierra Leone, Mexico, Mauritius, Assam and Madagascar.
He wrote 37 books in his lifetime, the most famous being My Family and Other Animals, his memoirs of living in Greece. It was adapted into two TV series – My Family and Other Animals in 1987, and The Durrells in 2016, starring Keeley Hawes and Josh O’Connor. It was also made into a film in 2005. Durrell made 70 TV programmes documenting his trips around the world, which took him everywhere from Russia to New Zealand.
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