Louisa Dixie Durrell

Louisa Dixie Durrell, born Louisa Florence Dixie (16 January 1886 – 1964) was a British Indian subject, and the mother of novelist Lawrence Durrell and naturalist Gerald Durrell. She is perhaps best remembered as the character of "Mother" in the "Corfu Trilogy" - My Family and Other Animals, "Birds, Beasts and Relatives" and "The Garden of the Gods".

She was born to an Irish Protestant family in Roorkee, India in 1886 where she met and married her husband Lawrence Samuel Durrell, an engineer by profession. Together, they travelled all over India on account of Lawrence Samuel Durrell's engineering work. She had four surviving children - the eldest Lawrence, Margaret, Leslie and Gerald. She was actively interested in spiritualism and cookery, and would mingle with Indians to learn of local spirits and cuisine, not conforming to the views of segregation of her time. Her husband too held anti-racist views.

The death of her husband in 1928 decided her to move to England, but in 1935, she moved with her three youngest children, Lawrence Durrell and his wife Nancy, to Corfu. It is here that she is portrayed by Gerald Durrell in the "Corfu Trilogy" - My Family and Other Animals, "Birds, Beasts and Relatives" and "The Garden of the Gods" as the well-meaning, bumbling matriarch of the Durrell family.

She moved back to England in 1939 upon the outbreak of World War II with her three youngest children. She stayed with Margaret and Gerald Durrell at their Bournemouth boarding house and Jersey Zoo respectively till the end of her years.

She was portrayed by Hannah Gordon in the 1987 BBC TV series "My Family and Other Animals", and by Imelda Staunton in the 2005 BBC remake. she was a lovley woman.

References

*"Gerald Durrell — The Authorized Biography", Douglas Botting (1999)