Antrobus Complete (1957)

My mother read these stories out loud when I was young: that gentle 50s humour has no age limit. I loved the quirky, eccentric yet ordered world portrayed with such side-splitting charm and decided I wanted to go into the Corps myself. No language skills, no Afrikaans blood and not an ounce of diplomacy made it a non-starter but these tales of Antrobus and Angela and de Mandeville continue to enchant me, over 40 years later.

When I first heard the stories I didn't know Lawrence Durrell was a serious writer - and was intrigued to find him mentioned within the pages of My Family and Other Animals, my setwork when I was 10 - so I didn't wonder at how an author who could be so seriously literary on the one hand could be so effortlessly funny on the other. On rereading one of the stories I discovered a self-reference: he mentions one of the Corps is going to Alexander and has the Alexander Quartet with him, then makes some refernce to 'that fellow Durrell'.

My only regret is that this collection does not contain the inimicable Nicolas Bently illustrations. ( )