I noticed that Leslie Durrell has received some attention on the Find A Grave website, with people leaving virtual flowers for him.
It seems that Leslie, even though he was not a famous person (and did not aspire to be, by all accounts) has sparked a lot of sympathy and empathy–I also wonder if, because there is so little information about him (which given that he was not actually a notable person in his own right is quite appropriate), but a quasi-fictional version of him has been pushed into the public eye mostly by the wildly popular The Durrells series, people have become curious.
Intrigue generates curiosity. My posts about Leslie probably generate the most traffic on here.
The Find A Grave website page on Leslie–which I did not create even though the person who did create it seems to have used my post (without credit, but that’s life)–helpfully gives information on where Leslie was laid to rest–in the Bournemouth North Cemetery, presumably near to other members of his family–his mother, Louisa and sister Margo are both laid to rest there. I presume that Margo must have arranged his funeral.
Regarding the user comments on the Find A Grave page that suggest Leslie died in a pub on the Portobello Road–this is possibly true, as he did pass away in a pub and he did drink in Notting Hill, according to Michael Haag. I cannot find any records at all of Leslie having had any children with Doris, however.
He told his drinking companions in a Notting Hill pub that he was a civil engineer, like his father, and died there of heart failure in his mid-sixties.
Find a Grave notes that he passed away in Westminster (where I assume he was living) and the Portobello Road is in Kensington and Chelsea. His death was registered in Westminster.
I recently came across this rather amusing letter in The Guardian by Sara Holdsworth, whose parents rented out the top floor of their house in Woodside Park in north London to Gerald and Jacquie in 1955-1956, after returning from Cyprus, when Sara was a baby.
Holdsworth writes:
The number and exoticism of the animals they brought with them had been airily glossed over when they arranged the let. I was a baby at the time, and my mother was convinced that one of the snakes or monkeys would climb down a drainpipe and snatch me from my pram. However, before this could happen the Durrells left suddenly, taking their menagerie but leaving a strange assortment of clothes (including a pair of snakeskin high heels) which provided me with dressing-up gear for many years.
One assumes that the snakeskin high heels were probably Jacquie’s.
According to Gerald’s official biographer, Douglas Botting (who does not mention any snakeskin high heels, unfortunately), the Durrells left quickly because Gerald had begun writing his masterpiece, My Family and Other Animals, in the flat at Holden Road, but felt that he could not continue there, and so Margo came to collect him and Jacquie and their various animals, and they moved to her boarding house in Bournemouth.
Botting describes how Gerald decided to embark on writing this book after becoming ill with jaundice, mapping it out and deciding on which characters–animal and human–to include, and thinking up pseudonyms for those still alive who may potentially have been litigious, before realizing that:
Woodside Park was not the place to write the book. Gerald’s landlord objected to the two monkeys he was keeping in the flat.
One wonders whether, given Sara’s recollections of her parents feeling concerned that the Durrells’ snakes might crawl down drainpipes or the monkeys snatch her from her pram, that in fact (a) there was a bit (perhaps a lot) of tension between the Durrells and their landlord and landlady, and (b) Margo came to take them away to Bournemouth in a rush because of that, and not because Gerald thought Bournemouth would be more convivial to his muse.
Here is the house where the Durrells lived for a brief time, and where My Family and Other Animals was originally conceived, even if it did not end up being written here.
I have created a new page here that provides Amazon UK links to books by and about the Durrells as a handy reference list for people (I will update it soon to include more books–it is a work in progress as I have bits of time to update it).
There was such an intense interest in the fate of Leslie Durrell, prompted by the ITV series The Durrells, that I thought I would add some more information from Douglas Botting’s official biography of Gerald.
Leslie was a private person, a fictionalized version of whom has been transformed into a public figure and thrust into the spotlight first by Gerald himself, who appropriated some of his stories and retold them as having happened to him, in My Family; and most recently by the ITV series. Leslie himself was not “famous” like his brothers, and by all accounts never sought to be, yet since he has become a “character” in a public drama, people want to discuss his story.
Botting only concentrates on negative aspects of Leslie’s life and relationships with his brothers, describing him as “the enigma of the family, the cracked bell who was always striking a dud note…unable to settle to anything, drifting and shiftless and convinced the world owed him a living” though he was “basically well-intentioned and never malicious” according to Botting–whereas Michael Haag’s bookilluminates some more positive elements.
Gerald and Lawrence, who had public reputations to protect, became increasingly worried that Leslie’s actions– some of which allegedly bordered on, or even crossed into, the criminal– would damage them. Botting traces this trajectory back to Leslie’s childhood in Corfu, which Leslie had said consisted of “five golden, drifting, ultimately destructive years.” According to Botting, the family’s return to England “marked a big step in his gradual descent into waste and oblivion,” in particular after he was declared unfit for military service. After that “nothing much worked for Leslie.”
By 1946, when Gerald went to stay at his mother’s Bournemouth home ahead of his animal collecting expedition to Africa, Botting notes that at this time, the “erratic behavior of Leslie..had been giving cause for concern.” Leslie had gotten Maria, the family’s Greek maid, pregnant.
Leslie, for his part, felt the pressure that the spotlight of being the less successful brother of two famous writers brought. Even when he went to live in Kenya, in the late 1960s, where he worked as a bursar at a school near Mombasa, he found that “it was terrible” after people found out whose brother he was.
“I felt like something out of a zoo,” he admitted.
It was in Kenya that Leslie managed to get himself into a lot of financial trouble, after allegedly conning a woman out of a large amount of money. Botting records how, after Gerald received a letter from one Mr Wailes whose mother had been “involved” in this incident, Gerald immediately wrote to Leslie accusing him of “implying” that he, Gerald, would help him, and adding that “I am not in any position to help you financially and I do strongly object to receiving letters from complete strangers implying that my only function in life is to rescue you.”
Leslie and his wife Doris fled Kenya, but a Guardian journalist managed to track the pair down in London’s Marble Arch, and wrote an article about him.
Gerald claimed that he and Lawrence had tried to help Leslie throughout his life, but to no avail, noting that “though my elder brother and I frequently tried to help him, he would always end up doing something that would make us lose patience with him.”
Despite everything, however, Leslie’s former employer in Kenya had nice things to say about him, including that he was kind and reliable, and a brilliant raconteur who “should have been a writer.” However, he had “no obviously marketable talents” and was “scarred by a bizarre childhood.”
All in all, Leslie appears to have suffered not just in the shadow of his two very famous and successful (outwardly at least) brothers, but also, and perhaps mostly, because of the spotlight this threw on him. Had Leslie been the sibling of two ordinary brothers, it is unlikely anything he did would have attracted nearly as much negativity.
On 25 May, Colenso Books & the Delos Press published a further collection of poems by Lawrence Durrell, entitled The Fruitful Discontent of the Word.
Edited by Peter Baldwin, the collection includes poems from Durrell’s later works, Sicilian Carousel and Caesar’s Vast Ghost as well as from the 1969 collection Spirit of Place and from the Avignon Quintet. The poems from these four works have never been available separately before.
Download a flyer about the new collection, including details of how to obtain it, here —> Fruitful Discontent A4 flyer. Or you can email Colenso direct on colensobooks <at> gmail dot com.
I’ve been meaning to write a review of Michael Haag’s book, published last year to coincide with the very popular ITV TV series The Durrells, but life got in the way. Today, I came across Kathryn Hughes’ rather vitriolic review in The Guardian, posted almost a year ago, so I thought that by way of my own review I would simply address some of the points that Kathryn raises in her piece. Continue reading →
Margo’s granddaughter, Tracy Breeze, left a comment on my earlier post, Whatever Happened To Margo?, with details about Margo’s children and also about Leslie’s son Tony. I contacted Tracy and asked her if she would be OK with my posting her comment here as a main post, as I know that many readers would be very interested in it — and this way it is more visible. The original post about Margo does get a lot of traffic and I do also get emails asking for updates! Anyway, Tracy kindly agreed — and also shared these photos with me, which she has given permission to use. (Please note that the photos are all copyright to Tracy Breeze, they are watermarked accordingly.)
I hope that Margo’s book about her life working on Greek ships will be published, as I am sure it will be extremely entertaining.
Leslie’s son Tony lives in the US – he kept in contact with Margo Durrell throughout his life until she died in 2009.
Margo’s first son, Gerry Breeze lives in Bournemouth. He is highly respected in the martial arts world and was teaching karate until ill health late 2016. Gerry is living and married to his third wife Sheila Breeze. His children Tracy Breeze, Sarah Breeze, Nick Breeze, Martin Breeze, Lawrence Breeze and Laura Breeze and has many grandchildren.
Margo’s second son Nick Breeze also lives in Bournemouth and the two brothers see each other often. Nick is married to his second wife Jan Breeze and he has two sons Daniel Breeze and Christopher Breeze.
I, Tracy Breeze published my Nan, Margo Duncan (Breeze/Durrell) book which is now out of print but I’m happy to say Penguin are publishing again in 2018. She has another unpublished book about her adventures working on a Greek ships travelling the Carribbean when she was 50 which I hope to get into print.
Margo was the best grandma anyone could ever wish for and a huge influence on our lives. Her zest, passion and fun for life never allowed for a dull day, she was more than amazing and much missed.
Anonymous hand, record one afternoon,
In May, some time before the fig-leaf:
Boats lying idle in the sky, a town
Thrown as on a screen of watered silk,
Lying on its side, reddish and soluble,
A sheet of glass leading down into the sea . . .
Down here an idle boy catches a cicada:
Imprisons it, laughing, in his sister’s cloak
In whose warm folds the silly creature sings.
Shape of boats, body of a young girl, cicada,
Conspire and join each other here,
In twelve sad lines against the dark.
The Villa Ambron, where Lawrence Durrell lived and worked in Alexandria, is in a deplorable state according to this Facebook post by Ahmed Essam.
The terrible state of the historic villa has also been noticed by political activist Essam Fathallah, who has called for action to save the city of Alexandria and its heritage, as Egyptian outlet Al Youm 7 reports.
Durrell was not the only artist to live in the villa — Egyptian painters Effat Nagy and Saad al-Khadem also resided there.
Durrelliana 