My Family and Other Animals (Corfu Trilogy #1)

by Gerald Durrell

The cypress trees undulated gently in the breeze, as if they were busily painting the sky a still brighter blue for our arrival.

Gradually the magic of the island settled over us as gently and clingingly as pollen. Each day had a tranquillity, a timelessness, about it, so that you wished it would never end. But then the dark skin of night would peel off and there would be a fresh day waiting for us, glossy and colourful as a child’s transfer and with the same tinge of unreality.

‘Animals and explosions all day, and then bloody great twelve-gun salutes in the middle of the night … It’s carrying eccentricity too far