'Highly readable and elegant' Spectator 'Wonderfully done' Guardian Lawrence Durrell was unquestionably one of the most distinctive, original and compelling literary figures of his age. From his childhood in India and Burma to his bohemian youth in London and Paris, from his madcap scheme to move his family to Corfu to the formative war years spent in Alexandria - this masterful and richly detailed biography is essential reading to understand the man and the writer. In Larry, Michael Haag, the world's foremost expert on the Durrells, brought together his unrivalled knowledge and first-hand meetings with the Durrell family and associates to offer the definitive account of the young Lawrence and the real-life settings and stories that inspired his acknowledged masterpiece, The Alexandria Quartet.

Highly readable and elegant ... alluring ... What we have is that most interesting approach of literary biographies - the formative years before the fame * Spectator *
Haag's depiction of Alexandria ... is the most evocative work of non-fiction I have read -- Cosmo Adair * The Times *
Expertly completed * TLS *
Fresh and lively ... there's much to admire in Haag's account * Critic *
This is an important, often revelatory text * Irish Times *
A superb biography .. By the end of its almost 500 pages, you feel you know the man, which is as much as any biographer can hope for -- Thomas W Hodgkinson * The Oldie *
It feels right that this biography of Lawrence Durrell, only the second major one since his death in 1990, is by Michael Haag, who spent his career writing about the eastern Mediterranean ... Haag's descriptions of Alexandria's melting-pot culture and its steamy eroticism are wonderfully done * Guardian *
Praise for Michael Haag: 'Haag is a romantic pluralist, with an instinctive taste for the esoteric, the independent and the defeated; and a corresponding distrust of victors and orthodoxies * TLS *
Family stories are worth telling, and this one is fascinatingly put together by Michael Haag... An absolutely riveting read * Daily Mail *
Haag's Alexandria goes further than any other book I know to animate the world these people lived and loved * Sunday Times *
Ending this haunting book, some readers may want to re-read it at once * Guardian *

Michael Haag was a writer, historian and biographer. He wrote widely on the Egyptian, Classical and Medieval worlds; and on the Mediterranean and the Middle East. He was regarded as the world's foremost Durrells scholar. His books for Profile include The Durrells of Corfu and the bestselling Templars series.