Gerald Durrell

The Overloaded Ark, first published in 1953, is the debut book by British naturalist Gerald Durrell. It is the chronicle of a six months collecting trip to the West African colony of British Cameroon - now Cameroon - - that Durrell made with the highly regarded aviculturist and ornithologist John Yealland. Their …

The Talking Parcel is a 1974 book by Gerald Durrell in which children are transported to the fantasy land of Mythologia to save it from cockatrices. They are aided by a talking parrot and encounter many other magical creatures, including a mooncalf.

'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 …