Whatever Happened to Margo?

by Margaret Durrell

Overview

In 1947, returning to the UK with two young children to support, Margaret Durrell starts a boarding house in Bournemouth. But any hopes of respectability are dashed as the tenants reveal themselves to be a host of eccentrics: from a painter of nudes to a pair of glamorous young nurses whose late-night shifts combined with an ever-revolving roster of gentleman callers leading to a neighbourhood rumour that Margo is running a brothel. Margo's own two sons, Gerry and Nicholas, prove to be every bit as mischievous as their famous Uncle Gerald - and he himself returns periodically with weird and wonderful animals, from marmosets to monkeys, that are quite unsuitable for life in a Bournemouth garden.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780241983225
Publisher:	Penguin UK
Publication date:	03/15/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Margaret "Margo" Durrell (4th May 1920 - 16th January 2007) was the younger sister of novelist Lawrence Durrell, and elder sister of naturalist and author Gerald Durrell, whose Corfu Trilogy - My Family and Other Animals, Birds, Beasts and Relatives and The Garden of the Gods feature her as a character. Born in British India, she was brought up in India, England and Corfu. Margo had two children, Gerry and Nicholas, with her husband Jack Breeze, a British Royal Air Force pilot she met when he was stationed in Corfu during the Second World War. After they divorced, she moved back to Bournemouth, and started the boarding house she wrote about in her memoir, Whatever Happened to Margo?

Editorial Reviews

In 1947, Margo Durrell, sister to zoologist Gerald (The Ark's Anniversary) and novelist Lawrence (The Alexandria Quartet), returned home to England after years of extensive travel in order to find a means to support her two children. On the advice of an aunt, she established a boarding house in the seaside village of Bournemouth. This memoir, written in 1951 and discovered in an attic by a granddaughter, details Margo's experiences as a landlady who was continually beset by eccentric lodgers rather than the respectable tenants she had hoped for. Unfortunately, the stilted writing does not do justice to what must have been an interesting time in the author's life. Besides lodgers, who included several jazz musicians, a painter of nudes and a bigamist, her brother Gerald visited with his snake and several monkeys who later escaped into the neighborhood. Photos.

Publishers Weekly - Cahners\\Publishers_Weekly