Gerald Durrell’s beloved account of his childhood in Corfu, now in Penguin Modern Classics for the first time

‘When My Family and Other Animals was published it was as if someone had flung back the curtains, thrown up the windows and let in a stream of bright light’ - Kathryn Hughes, Guardian

‘Gerald Durrell was magic’ - Sir David Attenborough

'Living in Corfu was rather like living in one of the more flamboyant and slapstick comic operas’

It is 1935 and the Durrells have escaped the leaden summer skies of Bournemouth to arrive ‘like a troupe of medieval tumblers’ on the sun-drenched island of Corfu for a new life. Gerald Durrell’s beloved portrayal of his chaotic family – beatific Mother, Roger the dog, diet-obsessed Margo, book-loving Lawrence and gun-wielding Leslie – as well as his own adventures with a burgeoning menagerie of beasts, birds and insects (including an owl called Ulysses), is a timeless account of an idyllic childhood and an uproarious portrait of the English abroad.