For 60 years since My Family And Other Animals, Corfu has been the perfect island to rent a home from home: Here's why it’s a... villa thriller
Gerald Durrell’s 1956 book My Family And Other Animals has proved to be an enduring favourite for British TV, being dramatised five times in the past 30 years.
It’s perfect winter TV fare: a gentle comedy of middle-class manners that tells the story of an English family attempting to make a new life in 1930s Corfu.
If Durrell took big liberties with the true story of his Corfu family life, TV companies have been equally generous with the facts. And why not? It’s only entertainment, after all.
Shore winner: Corfu's Nissaki beach began to attract middle-class travellers searching for a decent property to rent, around 30 years after Lawrence Durrell led his family to the island
Given the hold that the Durrell story seems to have had on us, it’s surprising Corfu has barely tried to extract any tourist benefit from it. Apart from a few die-hard fans who have attempted to trace the path of the Durrells’ real-life progress across Corfu, the book is largely unknown among the locals.
Curiously, the one Durrell location which is commemorated is the house used by Gerald’s brother Lawrence – ‘Larry’ – who was better known as ‘a writer’ rather than for having written anything in particular.
Like his brother, he is best known for writing about Corfu. It was Larry who led the Durrells to Corfu.
Contrary to the impression that Gerald gives, Larry mostly lived in a different house to the Durrells with his wife (who is left out of Gerald’s book). Larry and his wife inhabited the White House, right on the sea in the village of Kalami.
Where Larry went, 30 years later British holidaymakers followed. The coastline from Nissaki to Kassiopi began to attract middle-class travellers searching for a decent property to rent, at first via small ads in magazines and newspapers.
Soon villa rental companies established themselves – operators such as CV Villas who acquired a growing list of properties.
Fiction: A scene from the latest television version of My Family and Other Animals
The advent of the internet had the effect of turning the clock back as far as self-catering is concerned. It was suddenly much easier for potential renters to contact potential letters directly via sites such as homeaway.co.uk.
If you book person to person, as it were, on the internet you have to take a lot on trust. Sure there are reviews, but are these totally reliable? There are scare stories about people renting via the internet who then discover they have handed over a substantial amount of money for a place that doesn’t exist.
It is not surprising, therefore, that villa specialist operators are now enjoying a comeback, especially at the higher end of the market.
Corfu is one of several destinations served by upmarket Scott Williams. One of their properties, Avlaki House, lies a little way south of Kassiopi with a view over to Albania, so close it seems as if it is in touching distance. The house is an impressive three-bedroom property with a large pool.
The pool man who came to clean it pointed out the stretch of headland to the south owned by Lord Rothschild. ‘He has a black swimming pool,’ he said. ‘Very nice.’
He pointed east across the narrow channel of water to the coast of Albania. The stretch of Albania opposite our villa was occupied by a straggling town that looked like a giant down-at-heel council estate. The bit of Albania which faced Lord Rothschild’s estate was wholly pristine and unspoilt.
Fact: A young Gerald Durrell living in Corfu in the 1930s
‘I understand that the Rothschilds bought the stretch of coast opposite their villa so that it never gets developed,’ explained the pool man.
According to reports, Rothschild may be wealthy enough to snap up bits of Albania but he avoids wasting money on air travel. No private jets for him – he flies easyJet and eschews the charms of Speedy Boarding.
This may be an act of thrift too far. Corfu airport is probably the worst in Europe – designed by a sadist or a lunatic (or both); it is nearly always overcrowded and overheated.
It would be easy to imagine that the journey to Hell begins at Corfu airport.
When the Durrell family arrived 80 years ago, Corfu was, like most Mediterranean places, somewhere that struggled to make a living from fishing and farming (olive trees underpinned the economy). Now tourism dominates: all shops around Avlaki are tourist shops of some sort.
While hotels predominate in almost every significant Mediterranean destination, in Corfu the balance remains tilted towards self-catering.
It is one of those places where it helps to know exact and honest details about the property and its location: when you’re trying to reach a place at night on an island which seems not to be fully represented on satnav, you need to know the phone number of a local rep who can guide you in.
The Durrells, of course, never had electricity – mod cons were in short supply. What they had, however, was an island that must have seemed like paradise to a sun-starved English family fleeing the Depression.
They would be amazed to see how Corfu has inched its way towards the modern world. But it would not be exactly unrecognisable: touched by most civilisations from the Greeks onwards, the island retains all of its ancient charm.
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