Durrell was born in Dum Dum, north of Calcutta (present day Kolkata) on 23 September 1884, the son of Samuel Amos Durrell and his wife, Dora Maria Johnstone, and christened in Fatehgarh, Bengal, on 7 October 1884.
Although Durrell purchased a house in Dulwich and was planning on moving to England, instead he transferred to Lahore with his family for supervising contract work.
Like many British whose families had been resident in India for generations, Durrell worked and socialised with Indians of all confessions and castes.
On one occasion, according to a story told by Lawrence Durrell, his novelist son, Durrell gave up his membership at a club when his proposal to include an Oxford-educated Indian doctor who had saved his son's life was turned down.
[2] The couple had three sons and two daughters: Lawrence (1912), Margery (1915), Leslie (1917), Margaret (1919), and Gerald (1925).