The lost world of Lawrence Durrell

This week marks Lawrence Durrell’s centenary. Durrell was once the great white hope of British fiction, but the cult has lapsed since his sixties heyday. Richard Davenport-Hines recently reappraised the The Alexandria Quartet, Durrell’s most famous work. He wrote, ‘It is hard now to recapture the impact half a century ago of these novels’ heat, luxuriance and profanity.’

50 years of sex and social liberalism in the West has obviously tamed Durrell’s ‘profanity’. And the conservative backlash in the Middle East has made his once exotic tale seem slightly fanciful. The cosmopolitan Levant has ceased to exist, replaced by corruption of a different kind, characterised by fear, xenophobia and oppression. Most modern eyes would read the famous duck shoot in Justine and see only the purple prose, which is not to everyone’s taste.

Durrell’s prestige as a novelist has waned, perhaps forever. But his reputation as a 20th century travel writer is confirmed, next to Fitzroy Maclean and Patrick Leigh-Fermor in the British pantheon.