Tuesday 26 August 2025
To help us celebrate Gerald Durrell's centenary year, we've been collecting stories about Gerry from our supporters. You can submit your own here.
Eckhard Gerdes
This drawing was given to me by Gerald Durrell back in the 1970s when he came to lecture at the Chicago Historical Society. I was still a kid, but I was an avid reader. Durrell’s books of his travels and his attempts to preserve endangered animal species and prevent their extinction were delightful. My father, knowing my love for Durrell’s books and always wanting to encourage my passion for literature, bought tickets for the lecture, and together we went.
Durrell’s lecture about his efforts on behalf of the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust (now Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust), of which I was a member, was fascinating to me. On a large pad of white poster pages that was on a stand, he drew cute drawings of the animals he was discussing. They were delightful. At the end of the lecture, the host announced that the pictures would be auctioned off after the event. I asked my dad if we could get one, and he said he’d try. We stayed for the auction, but the pictures were sold for hundreds of dollars each, which my dad could not afford. He explained that to me, and I understood. But he saw I was crestfallen.
What my dad did then was one of the greatest gestures of love he ever gave me. He wrote to Durrell and explained what had happened and how disappointed and saddened I was to not have been able to get one of the drawings. He explained that I was a loyal reader and even had joined the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust just to support Durrell’s mission. Durrell, bless the man, took the time and effort to draw me my own drawing and to mail it to me. I was floored! That meant the world to me, and, in a world in which very little that was positive had ever happened to me, this was incredible. I will always be grateful to my dad and to Gerald Durrell for going out of their way to do something for me just because it made me happy. That was rare in my life, and I was deeply affected by it. Here is Durrell’s drawing that he sent me. Thank you, Mr. Durrell, and thank you Papa.
Julie Martineau
About 30 years ago, it all started with a book: a translation in pocket format of ‘A Zoo in my Luggage’. I looked in every thrift shop or used bookshop for Gerald Durrell's titles, in English or in French, for some years. I enjoyed reading many of his books, and I am still greatly inspired by his example, how he was able to help breed and create natural environments for keeping endangered animals before re-introducing them in their natural habitat, a model that in turn "breeds" more sensible humans to do the same, and to work with natural intelligence. Thank you, what an important legacy for our living planet!
Lesley Greasley
While not a memory of Gerry personally, one of my sweetest childhood memories is of my sister and I, both in bed at bedtime, listening to our mother reading to us from ‘My Family and Other Animals’. We had to be very patient as she would often be consumed with laughter about what was going to happen next. I remember she always found Spiros' need to add an "s" to the end of his words highly amusing. Such happiness from someone we didn't know, thank you. I went on to visit Jersey for the first time when I was a teenager and have been a supporter of Durrell ever since.