Surrey Vintage Vehicle Society caters for veteran cars, vintage cars & classic cars, as well as commercials and motorcycles.

London-Brighton Veteran Run: 
Please see our Picture Galleries 
2021  Brighton Veteran Run

Another interesting photo received from Mark Dawber (New Zealand) from a forum of old photos and asking for information on the make of vehicle? Car looks very American but the side profile of the radiator looks very thin and more like an Italian Fiat? 

-- The photo was relatively faint so we have considerably enhanced it so as to be able to see the detail. Searches on the origins of the photo itself led us to Corfu, and a number of leads suggested that it may have connections with the Durrell Family of TV Series, and that it may have belonged to Spiros, their taxi driver. 

Fiat it definitely is not, because this car has a body fill gap between the the two doors, which the Fiats of the era did not have. Then delving into the car that is featured in the TV Series determined that the film company bought the TV car as being a 1926 Oldsmobile because they could not buy the correct car in working order in the UK. The car seems mis-dated by the film company because the roundel on the radiator was not introduced until 1929, so theirs would be a cca 1929 Oldsmobile F29T Phaeton. The car in the original photo is not Oldsmobile. Possible contender with a very thin rad surround that did come to mind was a 1930 Chrysler. The hubcaps are similar. However, further research confirmed it a cca 1929 Dodge DA Six Phaeton, the Touring version, on wood wheels, quite a rare as made for a very short time. It being a Dodge was later confirmed by looking into the history of owner Spiros.

So who was Spiros, and who were the Durrells of Corfu, and where is Corfu? From personal experience there were two halves to Corfu in the late 1980s, Corfu being the Greek Ionian roughly banana-shaped Island just off the coast of Albania in the Adriatic sea, south of Yugoslavia. The southern half Corfu near Kavos was wild, - as in sex, booze and rock-roll. The northern half was also quite wild but of the 'as-nature-intended-it' type, - justly deserving the nickname Kensington-on-Sea. Mostly populated by affluent Brits owning or renting neatly manicured villas in picturesque quiet cove harbours with just the occasional gleaming yacht bobbing on the crystal blue waters, which would occasionally be disturbed by a surfacing dolphins. No massive hotels, no massive holiday parks, no camping sites, no marinas, no crowds, and above all, - no war !!

In view of family connections most of our annual holidays had been spent just up the same Adriatic coast in Yugoslavia. Unfortunately, in 1991 the country of Yugoslavia fell apart in a very bloody divisive ethnic cleansing civil war which lasted for years and instantly terminated the tourist industry of costal part of Yugoslavia, now Croatia. So, we had to find somewhere else wild for holidays. English relatives suggested Corfu which was their regular holiday choice, in the quiet NW costal village of Kalami .

And this is where I first came across the Durrells. Who? The Durrell Family; - The story goes; a bunch of itinerant Brits who ‘fell on hard times’ and eventually came to live in Corfu in the early 1930s. Most of them wrote books and one was also keen on animals. He wrote the book that made them, and Corfu, famous “My family and other Animals” the youngest son Gerald Durrell. A number of TV Series were made from these books describing a relatively dysfunctional family living in rented houses in the then entirely wild and unspoilt island which only had the one car which belonged to the local taxi driver. The photo showed this car. So at least some of the contents of the TV Series must have a connection with real life? Poor impoverished British family on their uppers escaping to a poor Greek island as they had nowhere else to live. Would make a lovely TV Series?

The TV Durrells with the TV Spiros and an Oldsmobile

So, was that the real case, or was there a different story to find out about, - the 'real' Durrells story? A bit of peripheral digging suggested a somewhat different story.  A bit of deeper digging reveals that the story starts with a Lawrence Samuel Durrell (1884 - 1928) who was a British engineer, son of English parents whose families had been resident in India. Lawrence had been born and educated near Calcutta. He studied engineering and later worked as Chief Engineer on various Indian Railways. In 1910 he married Louisa Florence Dixie who was from a similar British family in Roorkee, a town on the Ganges Canal below the Himalayan hills where her father was the Head Clark of a foundry. Like him, she was a privileged child and grew up with nannies and servants and no significant cares to worry about. Her life generally continued along the same lines with her children similarly growing up with nannies and servants as did upper class children who would be seen by their parents clean and proper formally only in the evening during the Gin & Tonic time.

Lawrence and Louisa had five children, two which died in their infancy with the survivors being : Lawrence (Larry -1912), Leslie (1917), Margaret (Margo-1919), and Gerald (Gerry-1925), all were borne in India. Due to the two deaths, Louisa became an anxious mother seeing illness everywhere, and becoming overprotective. Doctors visited so frequently that they became personal friends. She constantly felt depresses and started her life-long battle with alcohol. The Durrell family moved frequently, but conformably, as Lawrence worked for various large regional railway companies and by 1918, had joined the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway. In 1920 he retired from public service with a generous family pension. To keep busy, he started Durrell & Co., Engineers and Contractors at Sakci, this being his own civil engineering company. At this time Lawrence did a lot of work for the Tata family and was successful and quite well off.

Durrells India 1924 including Father  (no Gerald) Durrells Corfu 1936, (r to l) Louisa, Gerry, Larry and wife Nancy, Margo (no Leslie)

Apart from having comfortable properties locally in India, he had adequate funds to purchase a house in Dulwich England with view to a retirement location, and he also had adequate funds to leave adequate legacies for all of his children. Poor and destitute they were not! The rebellious nature of the children probably came from being well-off and privileged brats with parents who had them at arm's length, and kids who were able to take it out on the servants. The children played on Louisa's fears, abusing them to the maximum. The family moved again to Lahore where Lawrence continued supervising some of his civil engineering contracts. While there, in 1928, he contracted an illness which remained undiagnosed but was attributed to overwork. To try and improve matters they moved for a better climate to the Dalhousie Hill Station, but this did not help the situation or prevent Lawrence's eventual death due to a brain hemorrhage in April 1928 at the age of 42.

Lawrence's death left Louisa desperate and contemplating suicide, and she would have carried it out had she not had the three year old Gerry to look after. Instead she decided she desperately needed a change of scenery. Eldest son Larry was already in a boarding school in England, so Louisa decided to also go there with the other three children. She sold their house in India and sent all their belongings to their eight-room mansion house which husband Lawrence had earlier purchased in Dulwich in London. They hired staff to look after the cooking, house and grounds and tried to live the British Raj life in Dulwich. The venture proved impractical and expensive with only Louisa and young Gerry rattling around the huge mansion. So they decided to downsize by renting out the mansion to others and downsizing to a serviced flat in Queens Hotel in Upper Norwood.



This scenario did not turn out much better for Louisa who was sinking more deeply into a love affair with the gin bottle. At the hotel they became friendly with a family of ladies who were intent in moving to Bournemouth, a retirement seaside town on England's south coast suitable for the ex-military and for civil servants. The ladies persuaded Louisa to sell up in London, move to Bournemouth and to buy a Victorian mini-mansion in a posh part of the town. This she did do, but the move did not actually help the general mood much, and Louisa continued being very lonely and depressed, turning further to her friendly Gin, and to Spiritualism. Things got so bad that she ended up in some sort of rehab accommodation and was very seriously contemplating a return to India to be with her dead husband and children. But she did eventually get better and eventually sold the Mansion for a smaller house in Bournemouth suburbs which she renamed Dixie Lodge (picture below). This was named after her own family name. There she continued to hire staff and hired a governess for Gerry.



The elder children were becoming old enough to start living of their inheritances from their father, allowances which became valid at 21. Larry had a girlfriend Nancy, and settled with his allowance to a bohemian life in Bloomsbury. There they met another couple with a similar lifestyle. Part of this style for the other couple was to go to Corfu for a cycling holidays and eventually emigrated there. They wrote enthusiastically about the island's beauty and especially cheapness, and how the Durrells could live like kings there on their allowances, when compared to costs of UK. Larry and Nancy were taken by the thought and eventually in 1935 had been persuaded to take the plunge.

The fiction of the Durrells saga, as portrayed by the TV Series, was that they were all poor and impoverished and that the move to Corfu was for strictly financial reasons. This was absolutely not the case. They were all financially well-of and affluent with no financial worries apart from the very first short period on arrival in Corfu when the international banking system and a very small offshore Ionian island in the 1930s were not in sink, - and the banks had not speedily or correctly forwarded Louisa's money or the kids allowances. The actual main reasons for a new start was that the family wanted to have their mother have something new to do and break her alcoholic addiction.

The Durrell's arrived in Corfu in 1935. One of the first people they met was the island's only car owner and taxi driver Spiros 'Amercanos' Halikiopoulos. He is relevant to this article because it is his car that we were asked to identify. As previously advised, Spiros was a very jolly outward and extravert person who introduced the Durrells to all aspects of Corfu, found them their homes, became Man-Friday and a confidant to the whole family throughout their stay in Corfu. He was born locally near Corfu Town, but in 1920, with his brothers and many young Greeks, he went to America to seek his fortune. The brothers were very hard working and tackled a wide variety of jobs from working in the Boston stockyards to the Alaskan oil fields. Unfortunately the Great Depression intervened forcing the brothers to return. Spiros however undaunted returned with his prize possession a Dodge motorcar which became the first car in the Island. Added to which, - he was able to speak English,  for which there was not too much call for in 1939s Corfu. Perhaps English reminded him of what may have been."Spiros had entered our lives on our arrival in Corfu as a taxi driver and within hours had transformed himself to our guide, mentor and friend". The first accommodation he found for the Durrells in 1935 was Villa Agazini a couple of miles south of Corfu Town where for a while the whole family moved in together. Within the family lore this villa was known as the 'Strawberry Pink Villa' (picture below).




In 1936 Larry and wife Nancy wanted a place of their own to continue their bohemian lifestyle, and asked Spiros Amerikanos (Spiros the American) to find them a place. This he did in the small north-eastern wooded village with only two or three houses in it. The village is about an hour out from Corfu Town, and was called Kalami. There they were able to rent accommodation in one of the fisherman's cottages. Henry Miller visited there in the pre-Marylyn Monroe days. - And, - becoming personal, - this is the very same small little village where I and my family were first introduction to Corfu, - only a mere 40 years later. Not much had changed. Wide open pebbly beach, no harbour, no crowds, one small jetty, one taverna, and a prominent white building at the far end. The white building is called the 'White House', and is still owned by the same family. Initially it was a single storey building, to which Larry and Nancy added another storey for the princely sum of £43.10 shillings. The house was the only one in the area to have a telephone and locals were allowed to visit to make paid calls there. This building is today referred to as the 'Durell's White House' (picture below), wrongly often attributed to Gerald Durrell and 'My Family.." The White House in Kalami is now a three-storey building and is one of Corfu's best-known landmarks, where the Durrell apartment is available for letting. The original family still live in the other part, and the ground floor is now a popular Taverna. A number of films were made in the area including a number of scenes for the James Bond 'For Your Eyes' only' featuring the White House in the background. Local laws were introduced on the island very early on limiting the height of villas in Corfu hence no tall or massive high-rise developments were allowed.

Just beyond the headland where the White House is located is another picturesque bay which houses the area's oldest commercial Taverna. Taverna Nikolas is situated at the bottom of an impossibly steep mountain with a goat-track meandering forever upwards into the clouds. In the Durrell's time there were no roads to speak of in the area and all produce went to market in Corfu Town by boat, and all domestic necessities required to be returned by boat. Village people would climb down the steep hill with their produce to Taverna Nikolas where they would wait with a glass or two for the boat to Corfu Town, which would stop at their jetty. Likewise on return, a few glasses to get them ready for the himalayic climb back. Taverna Nikolas has been owned by the same family for generations where every second generation has a son called Nikolas. Current owner Pericles took over from his Pa Nikolas, ran the Taverna his whole of his life, and is now handing it over to his son Nikolas. At the Durrell's time, Taverna Nikolas would have been Leslie's family and friends local, a local you would visit necessarily by boat or hike over the peninsula. Currently a thriving Taverna which is internally covered with photos of famous people. It still has fabulous local food, and they can still send their private speedboat to collect you from your local villa. In my time it was retired Pa Nikolas in his green fishing boat who would come to the jetty and who would subsequently take you home in total silent pitch black darkness with only lapping water at the bows and with just the sound of pop pop of the single cylinder diesel. Toyah Willcox made a TV 'waitress for a week' programme here. We have returned to this lovely peaceful area for many subsequent years, but tourism is slowly taking over. Brilliant 20 minute YouTube video of Toyah at Nikolas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wD100g2L8I

Durrell's youngest son, Gerald, did indeed write memoirs about this formative period of his childhood on Corfu where flora and fauna abounded. Gerry was home-schooled and allowed to run wild. He developed a keen interest in keeping local animals as pets, a venture in which he was joined by a friend and mentor, the Greek doctor, scientist, poet and philosopher Theodore Stephanides. Doctors were never far out of sight for Louisa. Gerry and the doctor explored the island together, accompanied by Theodore's young daughter Alexia. Gerry portrayed his mother as the family's well-meaning but slightly eccentric matriarch in what is known as the 'Corfu Trilogy' of books.

In these books Gerry describes their early adventures and subsequent moves from Strawberry Pink Villa, - 'because of completely inadequate space for all the visitors and house guests", to Villa Anemmoyanni, (the Daffodil Yellow Villa), a large Venetian mansion near Kontokali, just north of Corfu Town, set in its own grounds and overlooking the bay where seaplanes landed on the way from London to Egypt. This would remain the Durrell home until 1937. The last villa was a very distinguished Georgian Villa Crerssida near Perama (the 'Snow White Villa'), overlooking Lake Halikiopoulou, with its own acres of olive trees, and its own small church, which had been the weekend retreat of the British High Commissioners. The buildings are no longer there as it has been replaced by Corfu International Airport which has no room for error because there is a cliff at one end of the runway and the ocean at the other.

There was nothing impoverished about the Durrell story or their stay in Corfu, all very posh, expensive and grand. Not perhaps as grand as The Raj but equally uncomplicated. There was nothing poor or destitute about how they lived, which perhaps, would not have made such a interesting TV Series.

The rumblings of World War II even in idyllic places like Corfu forced most foreign families to start leaving for safety reasons because of some of the religeous and political atrocities being committed during the 'fall of Greece' to the Axis Powers. In June 1939, and almost just in time, Louisa decided for personal safety reasons to return to England where she alternated by living with either her daughter Margo, who had a boarding house in Bournemouth, or with Gerald who was living at the Jersey Zoo which he had founded with the proceeds from his books. Larry and Nancy stayed until the bitter end and were lucky to make an emergency escape to Egypt. Louisa remained in England and died in Bournemouth in 1964 at the age of 78.

So what happened to the DURRELL siblings on return to England and later?

Gerry is generally described as a British naturalist, writer, zookeeper, conservationist, and television presenter. He founded the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Jersey Zoo on the British Channel Island of Jersey in 1959. The zoo experienced a world known event in 1986 of a child falling into a gorilla enclosure, with the gorilla then seemingly protecting the child from other gorillas until it was safely taken away unconscious. Gerald wrote approximately forty (40!) books, mainly about his life as an animal collector and enthusiast, the most famous being My Family and Other Animals (1956). Those were about his family's years living in Greece and were adapted into two television series (My Family and Other Animals, 1987, and The Durrells, 2016-2019) and one television film (My Family and Other Animals, 2005). Gerald was married twice, the first being following an elopement as pa-in-law did not like him. They moved in with sister Margo in her Bournemouth guest house where Gerald started assembling animals. As Bournemouth did not want a Zoo, they eventually managed to find a location on Jersey in 1959. They separated because Gerald's growing alchoholism. At 52 Gerald married his second wife who was at the time 28. By the 1980s Gerald had major health issues including arthritis which required hip replacement, and he suffered from alcohol-related liver problems which required a liver transplant. He died in 1995 in Jersey Hospital aged 70 from Septicaemia.

The eldest brother, writer Lawrence, aka Larry, is portrayed in the TV series as a frustrated author, never quite making it. In real life he became a bestselling author and one of the most celebrated writers in England. His most famous works were The Alexandria Quartet, published between 1957 and 1960, and The Avignon Quintet in 1974. The first won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1974 and the middle was nominated for the 1982 Booker Prize. Leslie travelled and lived extensively abroad working for many years in the Foreign Service of the British government. His stays in various places during and after World War II included Egypt and South America and inspired much of his work. Later, during the Yugoslav Wars he was in stationed in Belgrade. He seemingly disliked both Egypt and Argentina, although not nearly as much as he disliked Yugoslavia. Somehow because of being non-patrial status (borne in India) he managed to lose his British citizenship and had to apply for visas to visit UK. He married four times, and had a daughter with each of his first two wives. He died in Sommieres France in 1990 at the age of 78.

Sister Margo, who Gerald much lampooned in his novels as being very dappy, met a British aircraft engineer working in the Corfu waypoint for Imperial Airways flying boats London-Africa service, just as the family was about to return to UK due to the pending war. After much persuading, she left Corfu on the very last flying boat to the UK. They later married and lived in a postings at various locations in Africa, including Cairo, returning to UK, where in 1947 they divorced. Margot purchased a house opposite her mother's home in Bournemouth which she turned into a boarding hose. She died in Bournemouth in 2007 at the age of 87.

Brother Leslie, described in the TV series as having an interest in guns, hunting, and sailing, and according to sister Margo also liked in painting, used the inheritance from his father to buy a fishing boat, but it sank before its maiden voyage out of Poole Harbour. He and his wife subsequently lived in Kenya, but their efforts to run a farm failed. He later worked as a concierge at a Marble Arch hotel, dying of heart failure in 1983 at the age of 65.