Book description
'I once travelled back from Africa on a ship with an Irish captain
who did not like animals. This was unfortunate, because most of my
luggage consisted of about two hundred odd cages of assorted
wildlife . . .'
Gerald Durrell's accounts of the animals he encountered on his
travels were some of the first widely shared descriptions of the
world's most extraordinary animals.
Moving from the West Coast of Africa to the northern tip of South
America - and elsewhere - Durrell observes the courtships, wars and
characters of a variety of creatures, from birds of paradise, to ants
and anteaters, among others.
Told with his trademark charm and humour, Gerald Durrell's
Encounters with Animals is a uniquely entertaining
exploration of some of the world's most striking landscapes and the
wildlife it is home to.
Gerald Durrell was born in Jamshedpur, India, in 1925. He returned to
England in 1928 before settling on the island of Corfu with his family.
In 1945 he joined the staff of Whipsnade Park as a student keeper, and
in 1947 he led his first animal-collecting expedition to the Cameroons.
He later undertook numerous further expeditions, visiting Paraguay,
Argentina, Sierra Leone, Mexico, Mauritius, Assam and Madagascar. His
first television programme,
Two in the Bush
which documented his travels to New Zealand, Australia and Malaya
was made in 1962; he went on to make seventy programmes about his trips
around the world. In 1959 he founded the Jersey Zoological Park, and in
1964 he founded the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust. He was awarded
the OBE in 1982. Encouraged to write about his life's work by his
brother, Durrell published his first book,
The Overloaded Ark
, in 1953. It soon became a bestseller and he went on to write
thirty-six other titles, including
My Family and Other Animals
,
The Bafut Beagles
,
Encounters with Animals
,
The Drunken Forest
,
A Zoo in My Luggage
,
The Whispering Land
,
Menagerie Manor
,
The Amateur Naturalist
and
The Aye-Aye and I
. Gerald Durrell died in 1995.
