46 Facts About Lawrence Durrell

Lawrence George Durrell was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer.

Lawrence Durrell was the eldest brother of naturalist and writer Gerald Durrell.

Lawrence Durrell did not like formal education, but started writing poetry at age 15.

Lawrence Durrell supported his writing by working for many years in the Foreign Service of the British government.

Lawrence Durrell married four times, and had a daughter with each of his first two wives.

Lawrence Durrell began to write poetry seriously at the age of fifteen.

Lawrence Durrell's father died of a brain haemorrhage in 1928, at the age of 43.

Lawrence Durrell's mother brought the family to England, and in 1932, she, Durrell, and his younger siblings settled in Bournemouth.

On 22 January 1935, Lawrence Durrell married Nancy Isobel Myers.

Lawrence Durrell's letter sparked an enduring friendship and mutually critical relationship that spanned 45 years.

Lawrence Durrell's friend Theodore Stephanides, a Greek doctor, scientist, and poet, was a frequent guest, and Miller stayed at the White House in 1939.

The accounts cover a few of the same topics; for example, both Gerald and Lawrence Durrell describe the roles played in their lives by the Corfiot taxi driver Spyros Halikiopoulos and Theodore Stephanides.

In Corfu, Lawrence Durrell became friends with Marie Aspioti, with whom he cooperated in the publication of Lear's Corfu.

Lawrence Durrell first read Miller after finding a copy of Tropic of Cancer that had been left behind in a public lavatory.

Lawrence Durrell said the book shook him "from stem to stern".

Lawrence Durrell did not write it fully until he was in Egypt towards the end of the war.

Lawrence Durrell inspired his character Justine in The Alexandria Quartet.

In 1947, after his divorce from Nancy was completed, Lawrence Durrell married Eve Cohen, with whom he had been living since 1942.

In May 1945, Lawrence Durrell obtained a posting to Rhodes, the largest of the Dodecanese islands which Italy had taken over from the disintegrating Ottoman Empire in 1912 during the Balkan Wars.

Lawrence Durrell set up house with Eve in the little gatekeeper's lodge of an old Turkish cemetery, just across the road from the building used by the British Administration.

Lawrence Durrell's book Reflections on a Marine Venus was inspired by this period and was a lyrical celebration of the island.

In 1947, Lawrence Durrell was appointed director of the British Council Institute in Cordoba, Argentina.

Lawrence Durrell served there for eighteen months, giving lectures on cultural topics.

Lawrence Durrell returned to London with Eve in the summer of 1948, around the time that Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia broke ties with Stalin's Cominform.

Lawrence Durrell was posted by the British Council to Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and served there until 1952.

Lawrence Durrell moved to Cyprus with their daughter Sappho Jane, buying a house and taking a position teaching English literature at the Pancyprian Gymnasium to support his writing.

Lawrence Durrell next worked in public relations for the British government during the local agitation for union with Greece.

Lawrence Durrell wrote about his time in Cyprus in Bitter Lemons, which won the Duff Cooper Prize in 1957.

In 1957, Lawrence Durrell published Justine, the first novel of what was to become his most famous work, The Alexandria Quartet.

In 2012, when the Nobel Records were opened after 50 years, it was revealed that Lawrence Durrell had been nominated for the 1961 Nobel Prize in Literature, but did not make the final list.

Lawrence Durrell married again in 1961, to Claude-Marie Vincendon, whom he met on Cyprus.

Lawrence Durrell was devastated when Claude-Marie died of cancer in 1967.

Lawrence Durrell married for the fourth and last time in 1973, to Ghislaine de Boysson, a French woman.

Lawrence Durrell settled in Sommieres, a small village in Languedoc, France, where he purchased a large house on the edge of the village.

Lawrence Durrell completed The Avignon Quintet, published from 1974 to 1985, which used many of the same motifs and styles found in his metafictional Alexandria Quartet.

That year, Lawrence Durrell was living in the United States and serving as the Andrew Mellon Visiting Professor of Humanities at the California Institute of Technology.

Lawrence Durrell died of a stroke at his house in Sommieres in November 1990, and was buried in the churchyard of the Chapelle St-Julien de Montredon in Sommieres.

Lawrence Durrell was predeceased by his younger daughter, Sappho Jane, who took her own life in 1985 at age 33.

Lawrence Durrell worked for several years in the service of the Foreign Office.

Lawrence Durrell was senior press officer to the British embassies in Athens and Cairo, press attache in Alexandria and Belgrade, and director of the British Institutes in Kalamata, Greece, and Cordoba, Argentina.

Lawrence Durrell was director of Public Relations in the Dodecanese Islands and on Cyprus.

Lawrence Durrell later refused an honour as a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George, because he felt his "conservative, reactionary and right-wing" political views might be a cause for embarrassment.

Lawrence Durrell claimed to have disliked both Egypt and Argentina, although not nearly so much as he disliked Yugoslavia.

For much of his life, Lawrence Durrell resisted being identified solely as British, or as only affiliated with Britain.

The law was covertly intended to reduce migration from India, Pakistan, and the West Indies, but Lawrence Durrell was penalized by it and refused citizenship.

Thomas had earlier edited an anthology of writings, letters and poetry by Lawrence Durrell, published as Spirit of Place.