The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium

Book excerpt: If you loved My Family and Other Animals and can’t get enough of the Durrells after the Corfu series, this is the book for you. It constitutes a series of anecdotal snippets and short stories including ‘The Picnic’, a laugh-out-loud account of an ill-fated Durrell family excursion, which should have been a relaxing, jolly affair. But with the Durrells things are seldom straightforward and on this occasion all that could go wrong did go wrong - except Gerald Durrell's sense of humour in recounting the tale. Other hilarious and surreal Roald Dahlesque stories ensue, including the critically acclaimed Gothic horror story ‘The Entrance’.