Through The Dark Labyrinth

When Durrell came into the room it was as if someone had opened a bottle of champagne', said a friend. But there was a cruel dark side to the bubbling Durrell, and his brilliantly creative writer's life was indeed labyrinthine. Born in India, schooled under Mount Everest, where Tibetan Iamas trekked to and fro, he lived thereafter in a Tibet of the mind. From school in gloomy England he fled to exile in Greece and the Mediterranean. In wartime Egypt, he conceived The Alexandria Quartet, which brought fame with its 'exploration of modern love' and experimental form. His last great novel cycle, The Avignon Quintet, has intrigued with its formal complexity and compelling mystery - the story of his generation through peace and war. Wine and sun inspired him, sex and madness obsessed as sources of creativity; his life was marred by the tragic suicide of his daughter and the sudden death of his wife. Posthumous charges of incest cast a shadow over his memory but nothing can detract from the scope of brilliance of his achievement.