Durrell, Lawrence George

(1912-1990)

   Anglo-Irish novelist, playwright and poet, born in Darjeeling, India, the son of a British civil engineer (his brother Gerald, 1925-1995, was the zoologist and owner of a zoo on Jersey, Channel Islands.) Educated in India and England, he worked for a time as a jazz pianist in a London nightclub, and started his writing career in Paris in the 1930s. The family moved to Corfu in 1935, and during World War II he served as press attaché to the British embassies in Cairo and Alexandria. After the war he held various diplomatic and teaching jobs. He finally settled in France, where he lived for the rest of his life. He wrote verse plays and farcical short stories but is best known for The Alexandria Quartet, a series of four interconnected novels (1957-60). Some of his poetry publications: A Private Country, 1943. Cities, Plains and People, 1946. On Seeming to Presume, 1948. The Tree of Idleness, 1955. Collected poems, 1960. Some of his poems: "A Ballad of the Good Lord Nelson," "A Water-Color of Venice," "Acropolis," "Alexandria," "Eight Aspects of Melissa," "Paphos," "Salamis," "Sarajevo."

   Sources: Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. Erotic Poetry: The Lyrics, Ballads, Idyls, and Epics of Love - Classical to Contemporary. William Cole, ed. Random House, 1963. Biography of Lawrence Durrell. (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/durrell.htm). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The New Yorker Book of Poems. The New Yorker editors. Viking Press, 1969. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Who's Who. London: A & C Black, 2005.