3 Gerald Durrell Books Gerald "Gerry" Malcolm Durrell, OBE (7 January 1925 – 30 January 1995) was a British naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter. He founded what are now called the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Durrell Wildlife Park on the Channel Island of Jersey in 1959. He wrote a number of books based on his life as an animal collector and enthusiast The Bafut Beagles tells the story of Durrell's collecting expedition to the Cameroons, made in 1949, with Kenneth Smith. Firsr published in 1954, it was Durrell's third book for popular audiences. The New Noah First published by Collins in 1955. The book is an account for older children of his various expeditions to collect animals for zoos, to some extent an anthology of the best bits from various previous accounts My Family and Other Animals (1956) is an autobiographical work . It tells of the years that he lived as a child with his siblings and widowed mother on the Greek island of Corfu between 1935 and 1939. It describes the life of the Durrell family in a humorous manner, and explores the fauna of the island.