Summersdale

Synopsis

‘Three singles to Adventure, please,’ I said, trying to look as nonchalant as possible. ‘Yes, sir,’ said the clerk. ‘First or second class?’

In 1950, Gerald Durrell travelled to British Guiana to bring back a living collection of the fauna native to that corner of South America. There he met with many kinds of adventure: some amusing, some thrilling and some extremely irritating.

The team travel on a riverboat up the Essequibo through the green and lush tropical forests and trek across a landscape teeming with life and a riot of colours: from the crimson-breasted military starlings to the coppertoned howler monkeys. He gets into a sticky situation with an angry twotoed sloth and learns how (or how not) to lasso a galloping anteater. As Durrell tells us from the outset, there is one thing to be said for collecting animals: it can never be described as dull.