My Family and Other Animals

'The sky turns the colour of a jay's eye. The sea turns a deep royal purple. The mist lifts in quick, lithe ribbons, like a conjuring trick. Before us lies the island...'It's 1935, and an eccentric English family - four children, their widowed mother, and Roger the dog - arrives on the sun-soaked shores of Corfu to start a new life.For eleven-year-old Gerry Durrell, the extraordinary landscape provides the perfect playground. Its exotic fauna inspires a life-long fascination with the animal kin ...