Gerald Durrell - Douglas Botting

The authorised biography of the great naturalist and conservationist Gerald Durrell, who died aged 70 in January 1995 in Jersey, where he founded the zoo he'd dreamed of as a small boy and pioneered the captive breeding of animals for conservation.

Gerald Durrell was a world-famous naturalist and popular author who wrote, in all, some 37 immensely readable yarns, including the bestselling My Family and Other Animals. His other books include Birds, Beasts and Relatives, The Bafut Beagles and A Zoo in My Luggage.

Above all, he paved the way in print for the popular presentation of the natural world on television and presented 12 series himself - the early ones, of his own expeditions. Sir David Attenborough has said: 'He was responsible for changing people's attitudes to zoology and changing their agenda. He showed them small animals could be as interesting as apes and elephants He was a pioneer with a marvellous sense of humour.'

His brother was the famous writer Lawrence Durrell.