Margaret Durrell
Margaret "Margo" Isabel Mabel Durrell (1920–2007) was the younger sister of novelist Lawrence Durrell, and elder sister of naturalist, author and TV presenter Gerald Durrell, whose Corfu Trilogy of novels — My Family and Other Animals, Birds, Beasts and Relatives and Garden of the Gods — lampoons her character variously.
Born in British India, she was brought up in India, England and Corfu. In 1935, Margo accompanied her mother, Gerald and Leslie to Corfu, following her eldest brother, Lawrence, who had moved there with his first wife, Nancy Myers. By 1939, when her mother returned to England with Gerald and Leslie following the outbreak of World War II, Margo decided her real home was on Corfu and returned, sharing a peasant cottage with some local friends. Later the same year she met a British Royal Air Force pilot, Jack Breeze, who was stationed on the island. He convinced her of the dangers of staying on Corfu, and left with her to South Africa; the pair married in 1940. Margo lived with Breeze in South Africa for the remainder of the war. When the war ended, Margo and her husband moved to Bournemouth. Margo and Jack Breeze had two children: Gerry and Nicholas.
After divorcing her first husband, Margo purchased a large house across the street from her mother's house in Bournemouth and turned it into a boarding house. Gerald Durrell's core collection for his zoo (now the Durrell Wildlife Park) was initially housed in the back garden and garage on the premises of her boarding house. Margo eventually had a short-lived marriage with a musician named Matt Duncan.
Still enamoured with Greece, Margo applied for a job on a Greek cruise ship travelling to the Caribbean that she saw advertised in a newspaper.[1] She chronicled her time aboard the cruise ship in an unpublished diary held by her granddaughter, Tracy Breeze.[citation needed] Her one published novel, Whatever Happened to Margo?, was a humorous autobiographical account of her experience as a Bournemouth landlady in the late 1940s and included details about the lives of her family, particularly Leslie, Gerald and Louisa Durrell, outside of Corfu. Apparently written in the 1960s, it was discovered in the attic by a granddaughter nearly 40 years later and published in 1995.[2]
Margaret died aged 87 on 16 January 2007.[3]
Bibliography
- Whatever Happened to Margo? (1996, ISBN 0-233-98917-X)
References
- ^ Margaret Durrell Remembers, in Lawrence Durrell and the Greek World, Edited by Anna Lilios
- ^ Robin Balke, Paperback reviews, The Independent, 13 October 1996
- ^ thisisjersey.com obituary