Durrell, Lawrence (George) (1912-1990)

English novelist and poet. He lived mainly in the eastern Mediterranean, the setting of his novels, including the Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea (1957-60). He also wrote travel books, including Bitter Lemons (1957) about Cyprus. His heady prose and bizarre characters reflect his exotic sources of inspiration. He was the brother of the naturalist Gerald Durrell.

Life Born in India, Durrell was educated in Darjiling and Canterbury, Kent. He joined the foreign service and lived for a time in London and then in Corfu. During World War II he worked at the British embassy in Cairo. Later he was director of British Council Institutes in Greece and Argentina, and then went to live in France.

Work He began writing prolifically in the late 1930s, when he also began his long association with the US novelist Henry Miller, editing the magazine the Booster (Pater Delta) in Paris from 1937-39. He published several novels, including (as Charles Norden) Panic Spring (1937) and The Black Book: An Agon (1938), and many volumes of verse, including Collected Poems (1968). Commercial and critical success came in the late 1950s with the publication of the Alexandria Quartet. Like all his work, these novels display a lush, dense style, in which the influences of place and idea in human life are explored through the interaction of a small group of characters in Alexandria. Durrell sees modern human beings as isolated; the only way to achieve commitment and integration is through the creative processes of art and love.

His later novels include Tunc (1968) and Nunquam (1970), and The Avignon Quincunx comprising Monsieur (1974), Livia (1978), Constance (1982), Sebastian (1983), and Quinx (1985). He also wrote a critical study, Key to Modern Poetry (1952), and edited A Henry Miller Reader (1960).