The authorised biography of the great naturalist and conservationist Gerald Durrell, who died aged seventy 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 thirty-seven 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 twelve 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.