Its comic exaggeration of the foibles of his family – including his eldest brother Lawrence Durrell, who became a celebrated novelist and poet – and his heartfelt appreciation of the natural world made it very successful.

[1] The book is an autobiographical account of five years[2] in the childhood of naturalist Gerald Durrell, aged 10 at the start of the saga, of his family, pets and life during a sojourn on Corfu.

Gerald is the youngest in a family consisting of their widowed mother, writer and eldest son Larry, the gun-mad Leslie, and diet-obsessed sister Margo together with Roger the dog.

Other human characters, chiefly eccentric, include Gerald's private tutors, the artistic and literary visitors Larry invites to stay, and the local people who befriend the family.

The chronology of events as they occur in the book is also inaccurate, and the reason for the Durrells' departure from Corfu (imminent outbreak of World War II) is not given; instead, it is implied that the family returned to England for the sake of Gerald's education.

Despite the omissions and inaccuracies, Lawrence Durrell commented: "This is a very wicked, very funny, and I'm afraid rather truthful book – the best argument I know for keeping thirteen-year-olds at boarding-schools and not letting them hang about the house listening in to conversations of their elders and betters".

Nigel Marven of the Natural History Unit, Bristol was responsible for the animals side of the production; Denis McKeown, then PhD student in Psychology University of Sussex, did the training of the famous pigeon Quasimodo in the series.

In 2005, it was adapted by the BBC as a 90-minute film, My Family and Other Animals, starring Eugene Simon as the young Gerry, Imelda Staunton as Mrs. Durrell and Omid Djalili as Spiro.