Soaked in the sunshine of Corfu, where the author lived as a boy, this delightful book tells of Gerald Durrell's early life with his 'family and other animals'.Brought vividly to life are the extraordinary members of the Durrell family and theirmany eccentric hangers-on, as well as the bizarre menagerie Gerry adopts for closer study.

The procession of creatures he brings back to the strawberry-pink, the daffodil-yellow or the snow-white villa includes toads and tortoises, bats and butterflies, scorpions and geckos, ladybirds, glow-worms, octopuses and rose-beetles, Quasimodo the pigeon, the puppies Widdle and Puke and, of course, the Magenpies.