Margaret "Margo" Isabel Mabel Durrell

Born in British India, she was brought up in India, England and Corfu. In 1935, Margo accompanied her mother, Gerald and Leslie to Corfu, following her eldest brother, Lawrence, who had moved there with his first wife, Nancy Myers. By 1939, when her mother returned to England with Gerald and Leslie following the outbreak of World War II, Margo decided her real home was on Corfu and returned, sharing a peasant cottage with some local friends. Later the same year she met a British Royal Air Force pilot, Jack Breeze, who was stationed on the island. He convinced her of the dangers of staying on Corfu and the couple travelled together to South Africa, marrying in 1940. Margo lived with Breeze in South Africa for the remainder of the war. When it ended, they moved to Bournemouth. Margo and Jack Breeze had two children, Gerry and Nicholas. After divorcing her husband, Margo purchased a large property across the street from her mother's house in Bournemouth and turned it into a boarding house. Gerald Durrell's core collection for his zoo (now the Durrell Wildlife Park) was initially housed in the back garden and garage on the premises. Later, Margo had a short-lived marriage with a musician named Malcolm "Mac" Duncan.

Still enamoured with Greece, Margo applied for a job on a Greek cruise ship travelling to the Caribbean that she saw advertised in a newspaper. Her one published book, Whatever Happened to Margo?, was a humorous autobiographical account of her experiences as a Bournemouth landlady in the late 1940s, and included details about the lives of her family, particularly Leslie, Gerald and Louisa Durrell, outside of Corfu. Apparently written in the 1960s, it was discovered in the attic by a granddaughter nearly 40 years later and published in 1995. Margaret died aged 87 on 16 January 2007 Daughter of Lawrence Samuel Durrell and Louisa Florence Emily Durrell Ex-wife of Jack Breeze and Matt Duncan Mother of Gerry Breeze and Nicholas Breeze Sister of Lawrence Durrell; Margery Ruth Durrell; Leslie Durrell and Gerald Malcolm Durrell, OBE

SHE was the older sister in the literary family of Durrells, famously portrayed as a free spirit by her zoologist brother Gerald in his bestselling book My Family and Other Animals.

But the attention of the literary world focused on "sparkling" Margo Durrell herself when she published her own story, Whatever Happened to Margo? in the mid-1990s.

Margo, who spent much of her life in Bournemouth, sadly passed away at the age of 87 in January.

She was the last surviving member of the family that included another brother, Lawrence, who achieved international fame as a poet, dramatist and novelist.

Born in India, the family spent some time in Parkstone and then Bournemouth before living in Corfu for a number of years until the outbreak of war in 1939.

Margo secretly returned to Corfu where she spent some of the war years.

Later, she married her first husband, Jack Breeze, at St Andrew's Church in Charminster, Bournemouth.

She and her pilot husband travelled widely in Africa and then returned to Bournemouth.

Apart from a few years working in a boutique on a Greek cruise ship - getting the job after answering an ad in the Echo - and occasional trips to visit her brothers in Jersey and France, she made her home in St Albans Avenue, Bournemouth.

"Gerald would turn up with hoards of animals from his expeditions and place them in the back garden," said Gerry Breeze, one of her two sons.

"She became the focus of a delightfully chaotic circle of family and friends, much as her own mother had done."

After their marriage ended, she and Jack remained close friends until the day he died. She was also, briefly, married to Max Duncan, a trombone player.

"Both my husbands were terribly nice people," she once told the Echo. When Gerald's book, My Family and Other Animals, was televised in the 1980s, she was delighted.

"I enjoyed every minute of it," she added in an Echo interview a few years ago.

"I know they made me dotty but I took it in good part."

She had been a landlady in the 1940s, renting out rooms to a curious assortment of lodgers and wrote a manuscript about her experiences.

That manuscript was discovered decades later by one of her granddaughters, Tracy, in an attic and Whatever Happened to Margo? was published in 1995.

Brother Gerald wrote in the introduction to her book: "From the beginning, and every bit as keenly as the Durrell brothers, Margo displayed an appreciation for the comic side of life and an ability to observe the foibles of people and places.

"Like us, she is sometimes prone to exaggeration and flights of fancy, but I think this is no bad thing when it comes to telling one's stories in an entertaining way."

An exuberant personality, Margo - Margaret Isobel Mabel Durrell (Breeze Duncan) - passed away on January 16 in a Bournemouth nursing home, leaving two sons, Gerry and Nicholas, eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

At her funeral, Lee Durrell, widow of Gerald and honorary director of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, said: "Margo was truly one of a kind. She sparkled with her own special joie de vivre and enriched the lives of everyone around her with an aura of happy serenity and a marvellous sense of fun. "With the passing of Margo, the world loses a remarkable generation, a creative and inspiring family."