| ‘Greece is the country that offers you the discovery of yourself…’. Lawrence Durrell (1912 -1990) was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer, though he resisted affiliation with Britain and preferred to be considered cosmopolitan. It has been posthumously suggested that Durrell never had British citizenship, though, more accurately, he became defined as a non-patrial in 1968, due to the amendment to the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962.[2] Hence, he was denied the right to enter or settle in Britain under new laws and had to apply for a visa for each entry. His most famous work is the tetra logy The Alexandria Quartet. Lawrence and Gerald Durrell spent five years in Corfu arriving there in 1935 and leaving at the outbreak of war. Three of the four children (Gerald, Leslie and Margo) arrived with their widowed mother, Louisa, at the urging of Lawrence, who had recently settled on the island with his new wife, Nancy. Descendants of a colonial family that had lived in India for three generations, the Durrells had not visited Europe before the death of their father, Lawrence Samuel, who built railways in India. That caused a financial crisis and the family’s move to Bournemouth in 1928. You can find his house in Kalami beach the so called ‘White House’ |
