Brother of the More Famous Larry

If he were alive, the author, naturalist and zoo keeper extraordinaire Gerald Durrell would be celebrating his 85th birthday today (he made it to just shy of 70, despite a heroic alcohol intake). I've always had a soft spot for him since his books were among the first to get me into the habit of reading, and he was one of the first authors whose works I actually sought out and collected. As a child, I was a sporadic and haphazard reader, once in a while finding something that really fired me up, then lapsing into long periods of reading nothing. I had two relatives - one a cousin of my father's, the other a great uncle - who would from time to time send well chosen books as gifts, and it was the cousin who, when I was nine or ten, sent Gerald Durrell's Encounters With Animals. I remember the book fondly - a Rupert Hart-Davis hardback, with excellent illustrations by Ralph Thompson. As a budding young naturalist, I leapt on it, relished every page, and set about finding other Durrell books. Over the next few years, I must have read a dozen or so, including of course My Family And Other Animals, which I reread several times. I wouldn't care to revisit those books now (except perhaps My Family...) as I fear they would seem terribly glib and facetious. But Durrell - brother of the more famous author Lawrence - never claimed to be much of a writer: 'To me it's simply a way to make money which enables me to do my animal work, nothing more.' As Samuel Johnson remarked, 'No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.' And at least Durrell helped to make a reader of me - perhaps of many another nature-mad boy - and for that I'll always be grateful.