VIEWERS are currently being enthralled by a new six-part drama series The Durrells on ITV on Sunday nights. 

The programme is based on Gerald Durrell's book My Family And Other Animals about his unusual childhood when the family left Bournemouth one foggy August in 1935 to start a new life in Corfu. 

Here's our list of things you may not know about the Durrell family. 

1.  When Gerald Durrell first arrived in Corfu at the age of 10 it was, he said, "Like being pushed off the Bournemouth cliffs into heaven".

2.  Despite his birth in India, his travels in Africa and South America, and his final base in Jersey, it was Bournemouth that played the most consistent part in his life.

3.  The family first lived in a 'huge Victorian mansion', Berridge House on Spur Hill in Parkstone in 1931, before moving to a property on Wimborne Road, Bournemouth. 

4.  The engineer father had died while they were living in India, leaving Louisa some funds to bring up the children on her own.

5.  They decided to make a fresh start in the warmer climate of Corfu after Gerald was beaten by a master at Wychwood Prep School for bringing 'wrigglies' into school.

6.  The family returned to Bournemouth after the war. Gerald worked on a farm at Longham. His sister Margo married her first husband Jack Breeze at St Andrew's Church, Charminster.

7.  Years later on a hired typewriter in a cramped attic of his sister's home in St Alban's Avenue, Charminster, Gerald wrote his hilarious account of their time in Corfu. 

8. Gerald would turn up with hordes of animals from his expeditions and put them in Margo's garden and also kept a menagerie in the basement of JJ Allen department store. 

9.  Gerald tried to tried to open a zoo in Bournemouth, then Poole, and was all set to go with Upton House but it fell through.