Margaret Durrell

Margaret Isabel Mabel "Margo" Durrell (4 May 1919 — 16 January 2007) was the younger sister of novelist Lawrence Durrell and elder sister of naturalist, author, and TV presenter Gerald Durrell, who lampoons her character in his Corfu trilogy of novels: My Family and Other Animals, Birds, Beasts and Relatives, and The Garden of the Gods.

Margo Durrell
Born
Margaret Isabel Mabel Durrell

4 May 1919
Kurseong, Bengal, British India
Died16 January 2007(2007-01-16) (aged 87)
Bournemouth, Dorset, England
Notable work
Whatever Happened to Margo?
Spouse(s)
    Jack Breeze
    ​
    ​
    (m. after 1940, divorced)​
      Malcolm "Mac" Duncan
      ​
      ​
      (divorced)​
      Children2
      Parent(s)
      Relatives
      FamilyDurrell

      Margo was born in Kurseong, Bengal,[1] in British India and brought up in India and England. In 1935, she accompanied her mother, Gerald, and Leslie to Corfu, following her eldest brother, Lawrence, who had moved there with his first wife, Nancy Myers. Her mother, Gerald, and Leslie returned to England by 1939 with the outbreak of World War II, but Margo decided that her real home was on Corfu and remained on the island, sharing a peasant cottage with some local friends.

      She met Jack Breeze, the chief flight engineer of an Imperial Airways flying boat, later the same year.[1] At the time, Imperial Airways used Corfu as a waypoint between Africa and England.[1] He convinced her of the dangers of staying on Corfu, so, after Christmas, she left on one of the last Imperial Airways flights to leave the island to rejoin her family in Bournemouth.[1] She married Breeze in early 1940, and they moved to South Africa when the airline posted him there later in the year.[1] During the war years, they eventually moved to Mozambique and then Ethiopia, where she gave birth to their first child, Gerry, in an Italian prisoner-of-war camp by Caesarean section without anasthetic.[1] They lived in Cairo towards the end of the war.[1] After the war ended, they moved back to Bournemouth, where they had their second son, Nicholas.[1]

      Margo divorced her husband and, in 1947, purchased a large property across the street from her mother's house in Bournemouth, turning it into a boarding house.[1] Gerald Durrell's core collection for his zoo was initially housed in the back garden and garage. Later, Margo had a short-lived marriage with musician Malcolm "Mac" Duncan. She was still enamoured with Greece, so she applied for a job on a Greek cruise ship travelling to the Caribbean that she saw advertised in a newspaper.[2]

      Her book Whatever Happened to Margo? is a humorous account of her experiences as a Bournemouth landlady in the late 1940s and includes details about the lives of her family, particularly Leslie, Gerald, and Louisa Durrell following their time on Corfu. The manuscript was apparently written in the 1960s, but it was discovered in the attic by a granddaughter nearly 40 years later and published in 1995.[3]

      Margaret died at age 87 on 16 January 2007.[4]

      Bibliography
      • Whatever Happened to Margo? (1996, ISBN 0-233-98917-X)

      Portrayals

      References
      1. Haag, Michael (2017). The Durrells of Corfu. London: Profile Books. ISBN 978-1782832294.
      2. Margaret Durrell Remembers, in Lawrence Durrell and the Greek World, edited by Anna Lilios
      3. Robin Balke, Paperback reviews, The Independent, 13 October 1996
      4. "Durrell death marks the end of an era". Jersey Evening Post. 1 February 2007. Retrieved 15 May 2017.
      This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.