Following Durrell

Sunday Feature,
Tx Radio 3, 15 July 2001, 17.45

Travel writer Rory Maclean, author of the much-acclaimed `Stalin's Nose', and `Last Exit Magic Kingdom', examined the legacy of Laurence Durrell, who died in 1990, particularly the influence of his three Greek `island' books - Prospero's Cell, about Corfu; Reflections on a Marine Venus (about Rhodes), and Bitter Lemons of Cyprus, written just as the troubles started on the island in the mid 1950s.

How has Durrell's view of the Mediterranean influenced a future generation of travel writers, and how have the idyllic scenes he describes changed with the influx of mass tourism?

With interviews from Colin Thubron (Journey into Cyprus), Lucy Irvine (the original `Castaway'), Patrick Leigh Fermor (A Time of Gifts, Mani, Roumeli), and many people in Corfu and Cyprus who still remember Durrell and his lively, if unorthodox, circle of friends and fellow travel-writers.