Gerald Durrell was born in 1925 in India, where his father worked as an officer in the colonial administration. After his father´s death in 1928 the whole family moved to England. In 1934 they moved again to the Greek island of Korfu - it was the place where Durrell started to explore the nature and where he fell in love with animals. The whole stay at Korfu had great impact on Gerald Durrell and he described some parts of this important period in his books. Before the War the Durrells moved back to England and he soon started to attend a college and study zoology. In 1945 he started to work in the London Zoo and two years later he was sent to Cameroon to catch and bring back to the Zoo some african animals. This experience is described in his first book Overloaded Ark (1947), which immediately and quite suprisingly became a bestseller. A year later he organized similar expeditions to South America and Africa - his adventures are pictured in books The Whispering Land, The Drunken Forest, A Zoo in my luggage etc. and in his documentaries. He spent the royalties on building his own zoo on the island of Jersey in the Channel. In the 1950s he became active in enviromental movement and in 1958 he established Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust, which takes care of species in danger of extinction. In 1961 he went to collect animals to New Zeland, Australia and Malaysia and he used experiences from this journey in his most famous book Two in the Bush (1966). Til his death in 1995 Gerald Durrell, famous enviromentalist and writer, fought for saving endangered animals, for better treatment of animals in zoos and he used his books and films in his campaign for protecting nature on the whole Earth.

Gerald Durrell´s books are usually published for children, but they are so universal, interesting and funny that most of them can be read with amusement also by adults. The main feature of his writing is very delicate humor - both verbal and situational, which reflects deep love and understanding to people and animals, which are talked about. His style might be called educated - he doesn´t keep away from complicated sentence structures, he gives us detailed descriptions of nature with many special and scientific terms.

His work can be divided into three groups. The first group includes stories describing his expeditions and travells (f.e. The Drunken Forest, The Bafut Beagles, Catch Me a Colobus, Three Singles to Adventure etc.). Not only does he amuse the readers but he also tries to educate them. The second group includes his autobiographical novels (My Family And Other Stories, Marrying Off Mother And Other Stories, The Garden of Gods etc.), whih depict his childhood spent with mother, brothers and sister at Korfu. Books for yonger children belong into the third group - The Talking Parcel, The Donkey Rustlers.