Most children at the tender age of six or so are generally full of the most impractical schemes for becoming policemen, firemen or engine drivers when they grow up … I knew exactly what I was going to do: I was going to have my own zoo.

Menagerie Manor is the hugely entertaining account of how the much-loved conservationist and author Gerald Durrell fulfilled his lifelong ambition by founding his own private sanctuary for endangered species in Jersey with the help of an enduring wife, a selfless staff and a reluctant bank manager. With a foreword by Lee Durrell, Honorary Director of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, this book about the trials and wonders of living in the middle of a zoo is a classic that will continue to bring pleasure to those who grew up reading Durrell, and deserves a whole new readership.