My Family and Other Animals - Gerald Durrell

I often say this, but I can't believe it has taken me so long to get around to reading Gerald Durrell's memoir of his childhood in Corfu, My Family and Other Animals. It's been on my tbr shelves for a long time & I eventually listened to it as an audio book, so beautifully read by Nigel Davenport. It was actually Nigel Davenport who led me to the book. I'd watched the 1970s TV series, South Riding, in which he played Robert Carne. I loved it but I especially loved Davenport's voice & wondered if he's narrated any audio books. When I saw that he had read this one, I knew what I would be listening to next. So, I've spent the last few weeks listening to the adventures of the Durrell family as I drove to work, cooked & ironed.

The Durrells - Mother, Larry, Leslie, Margo & 10 year old Gerry - are suffering through a miserable winter when Larry decides that they should move to Corfu to get away from the awful English climate. The decision is no sooner made than they set off through Europe, eventually arriving on Corfu with a mountain of luggage & Gerry's dog, Roger. They are taken over almost immediately by Spiro, a giant of a man who thinks he speaks perfect English & who protects the Durrells from being robbed or taken advantage of during their stay on the island. They find a strawberry-pink villa with a bathroom (Mother's main requirement) & settle in. Larry is a writer & fills his room with books. Leslie is gun-mad, hunting anything that moves while Margo spends her time sunbathing & reading fashion magazines.

Gerry is mad on natural history & he & Roger explore the island observing & collecting the animals, mainly insects, that they come across. Unfortunately the rest of the family aren't as excited about scorpions in matchboxes as Gerry is & there are regular eruptions when his latest specimen is discovered in the fridge or the bathtub. Every so often, Mother becomes concerned about Gerry's education & employs a tutor for him, all of them lovable in varying degrees but none of them very useful as tutors. Gerry's best friend on the island is Theodore, a lovable man who is just as absorbed by natural history as he is. Every Thursday, Gerry has tea with Theo & they discuss Gerry's latest acquisitions or go on expeditions themselves to look for new animals to observe.Gerry's animals & his observations of the natural world are one of the many delights of the book. The adventures of Achilles & Cyclops the tortoises, Ulysses the owl, & especially the Magenpies (Spiro's mispronunciation of magpies) are very funny. As well as the mad adventures, there are also the quiet moments when the island truly seems a paradise.

Though I spent many days voyaging in the Bootle-Bumtrinket, and had many adventures, there was nothing to compare with that first voyage. The sea seemed bluer, more limpid and transparent, the islands seemed more remote, sun-drenched, and enchanting than ever before, and it seemed as though the life of the sea had congregated in the little bays and channels to greet me and my new boat. A hundred feet or so from an islet I shipped the oars and scrambled up to the bows, where I lay side by side with Roger, peering down through a fathom of crystal water at the sea bottom while the Bootle-Bumtrinket floated towards the shore with the placid buoyancy of a celluloid duck. As the boat's turtle-shaped shadow edged across the sea-bed, the multi-coloured, ever-moving tapestry of sea life was unfolded.

The Durrells moves from the strawberry-pink villa to a daffodil-yellow villa when Larry invites hoards of people to stay without considering where they're to stay then, later, to a snow-white villa to avoid a visit from a miserable old aunt. Mother just calmly tries to keep the peace as all she wants is for everyone to be happy. She's remarkably calm when Gerry brings yet another creature into the house or Larry, in his superior, sarcastic way, invites his literary friends to stay for indefinite periods. She calmly goes along to chaperone Margo on a date with a very unsuitable young man & seems able to cater for a large party at a moment's notice. Eventually, after five years, the family reluctantly decide to return to England for the sake of Gerry's education, & their final farewell to Corfu is incredibly poignant as the boat takes them away from this little paradise.

The success of the book is partly due to the picture of Corfu before tourism made the Greek islands so popular. To a child like Gerry, it seemed to be a paradise where he could spend whole days wandering through the olive groves & on the seashore exploring & observing. The descriptions of the natural history are fascinating but really, it's the eccentricities of the Durrell family that make it so very funny. I laughed out loud many times as I listened to stories of Larry's pomposity being squashed by the puppies Widdle & Puke destroying his room, or Margo's forlorn lovesickness over one of Gerry's tutors leading to her taking the puppies out on a boat trip that nearly ends in tears. Every time Leslie appeared with a gun, I laughed over his complete obsession with firearms over everything else. To Leslie, Corfu was just somewhere to hunt, he couldn't see the natural beauty of the place at all.

Apparently the book takes some liberties with the facts (Larry was married & living in another part of Corfu & the Durrells left because of the outbreak of war rather than for Gerry's education) but it seems the essential truth of the book was recognized, even by Larry (the writer Lawrence Durrell) who later said "This is a very wicked, very funny, and I'm afraid rather truthful book – the best argument I know for keeping thirteen-year-olds at boarding-schools and not letting them hang about the house listening in to conversations of their elders and betters." I just think it's one of the funniest books I've read in a very long time.

Naturally I'm going to find myself collecting copies of this book as I seem to collect copies of all my favourite books. I already own one paper copy & the audio book & next month, I'll have another copy as My Family and Other Animals is the new Slightly Foxed Edition & I collect those too.

There are also secondhand copies available from Anglophile Books.

South Riding

I recently finished watching the 1974 adaptation of Winifred Holtby's South Riding. It was in 13 parts & it was so good that it reminded me what I loved about so many of the more expansive literary adaptations I remember from the 1970s & 1980s.

For those who don't know the story, it's a picture of the fictional South Riding of Yorkshire - there are only three real ridings, North, East & West. Sarah Burton returns after some years away from home as a teacher in South Africa, to apply for the position of Headmistress at Kiplington Girls School. She gets the job & tries to instill her love of learning & her ambition into all her pupils. On the school's Board of Governors, her natural antagonist is Robert Carne, the local Squire & landowner, now fallen on hard times as he struggles to keep his estate going while paying for his wife to be cared for in an expensive nursing home. His highly strung daughter, Midge, becomes a pupil at the school. Alderman Mrs Beddows (based on Holtby's mother, Alice), is also on the Board & is a close friend of Carne.

Lydia Holly lives with her large family at the Shacks, the local slums. Lydia won a scholarship but has to leave school after her mother's death to look after her feckless father & younger siblings. The Council is split between the progressives such as Alderman Snaith & Joe Astell & the conservatives like Carne. There are many more characters &, as well as the personal stories of Sarah, Robert, Mrs Beddows & Lydia, it's a wonderful portrait of local council & the opportunities for corruption that exist there. Set in the 1930s, a time of unemployment & economic depression, it is an absorbing story.

South Riding was also adapted for television in three parts in 2011. Although I watched this new version & enjoyed it, three hours was never going to be long enough to tell such a complex story. What I really noticed though, was just how much more real the actors & locations were in the 1974 version. I think this is a trait of most modern classic adaptations. The actors are too pretty! Nigel Davenport looked like a man in his 50s who had experienced great misery in his life. Hermione Baddeley was just heartbreaking as Beddoes, with her horrible husband & her tenderness for Carne. Joe Astell, played by Norman Jones, looked like a man who'd had tuberculosis & wasn't completely well. I'm afraid Douglas Henshall never convinced me of that.

Lydia Holly, played by Lesley Dunlop, looked grubby, her uniform was different, shabbier than that of the other girls at school. Her home life was squalid, with screaming children & her poor worn out mother & the hopelessness of knowing that she would never get ahead without an education. Above all, Dorothy Tutin was magnificent as Sarah, so passionate & determined & bolshie. I also loved the sets. I could smell those horrible cloakrooms at the school, that Sarah fights so hard to change. Carne's home, Maythorpe, desperately trying to keep up appearances as the money ran out & Carne was left at one point trying to get a job in Manchester as a riding instructor. Nobody in modern adaptations looks grubby or unwashed. Clive Swift played Alderman Huggins with the most disreputable ginger beard I've ever seen.

Maybe it's because the earlier version was made only 40 years after the book was written, maybe it was the way the series was shot, maybe they just didn't have the money for grand sets & prettiness but there were no beauties in the 1974 version although it was filmed on location in the East Riding. The beauty came from the acting, the gorgeous theme music by Ron Grainer & the script by Stan Barstow who wrote A Kind of Loving, one of the working class novels of the late 50s that changed British fiction.

Winifred Holtby's novel is wonderful, one of my favourites, although it took me a few tries to get on with it. The first chapter is set in a Council meeting, setting the scene for the political machinations & personal relationships that will influence the plot. I know I'm shallow, but the copy we had at the library was a very uninspiring hardback with a plain green cover & I just could not get past that first chapter or the long list of characters that preceded it. It wasn't until I bought a copy of the book in Virago green that I got past Chapter One & raced through the rest of the book. I also couldn't resist buying another copy in the beautiful reprint covers Virago published a few years ago.

Another favourite adaptation from this period is Testament of Youth, from the book by Winifred Holtby's great friend, Vera Brittain. A new film of the book is being made at the moment & I'm sure I'll go & see it, I won't be able to resist. The trailer is here & it all looks very glossy & pretty. But, I can't imagine it will affect me as the book & television series did.

Copies of Testament of Youth & other books by & about Brittain & Holtby are available at Anglophile Books