Editing Lawrence Durrell (section)

===World War Two===
====Breakdown of marriage====
At the outbreak of World War Two in 1939, Durrell's mother and siblings returned to England, while Nancy and he remained on Corfu. In 1940, they had a daughter, Penelope Berengaria. After the [[Battle of Greece|fall of Greece]], Lawrence and Nancy escaped from [[Kalamata]], where they had been teaching,<ref>Durrell was the director of the British Council’s English Language Institute in Kalamata (Peloponnese) from September 1940 to April 1941. The little house provided for him on Navarinou Street (no. 83), on the seafront, remains. With his first wife Nancy (née Myers) and baby daughter Penelope, the family fled to Egypt as the German army advanced (see, e.g., Ian MacNiven (1998), ''Lawrence Durrell: a biography'', Faber, pp.226-7; Nikos Zervis (1999), ''Lawrence Durrell in Kalamata'', isbn: 978-960-90690-1-0 (published privately) (in Greek); Joanna Hodgkin (2023), ''Amateurs in Eden: the story of a bohemian marriage; Nancy and Lawrence Durrell'', Virago, pp.258-63.</ref> via [[Crete]] to [[Alexandria]], [[Egypt]]. The marriage was already under strain and they separated in 1942. Nancy took the baby Penelope with her to [[Jerusalem]].

During his years on Corfu, Durrell had made notes for a book about the island. He did not write it fully until he was in Egypt towards the end of the war. In the book ''[[Prospero's Cell]]'', Durrell described Corfu as "this brilliant little speck of an island in the [[Ionian Sea|Ionian]]".{{page needed|date=October 2016}} with waters "like the heartbeat of the world itself".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Durrell |first1=Lawrence |title=Prospero's cell : a guide to the landscape and manners of the island of Corcyra |date=1978 |publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=0140046852 |page=[https://archive.org/details/prosperoscellgui00durr/page/100 100] |url=https://archive.org/details/prosperoscellgui00durr/page/100 }}</ref>

====Press attaché in Egypt and Rhodes; second marriage====
During World War Two, Durrell served as a press attaché to the British embassies, first in [[Cairo]] and then Alexandria. While in Alexandria he met Eve (Yvette) Cohen (1918–2004), a Jewish Alexandrian. She inspired his character [[Justine (Durrell novel)|Justine]] in ''[[The Alexandria Quartet]]''. In 1947, after his divorce from Nancy was completed, Durrell married Eve Cohen, with whom he had been living since 1942.<ref name=SDperGranta1991>{{cite web|url=https://granta.com/journals-and-letters/|date=1 October 1991|title=Journals and Letters [of] Sappho Durrell|work=Sappho Durrell, quoted posthumously in a lengthy review of an "edited selection from the journals and letters [of Sappho Durrell] ... drawn mainly from 1979"|publisher=[[Granta|Granta 37]]|access-date=14 October 2020}}</ref> The couple's daughter, Sappho Jane, was born in [[Oxfordshire]] in 1951,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=%2FU7K5Kiz2gO%2FzUs03L%2Ba7g&scan=1|title=Index entry|access-date=13 October 2020 |work=FreeBMD |publisher=ONS}}</ref> and named after the ancient Greek poet [[Sappho]].<ref name=SD&LDperJR/>

In May 1945, Durrell obtained a posting to [[Rhodes]], the largest of the [[Dodecanese]] islands that Italy had taken over from the disintegrating [[Ottoman Empire]] in 1912 during the [[Balkan Wars]]. With the Italian surrender to the Allies in 1943, German forces took over most of the islands and held onto them as besieged fortresses until the war's end. Mainland Greece was at that time locked in civil war. A temporary British military government was established in the Dodecanese at war's end, pending sovereignty being transferred to Greece in 1947, as part of [[war reparations]] from Italy. Durrell set up house with Eve in the little gatekeeper's lodge of an old Turkish cemetery, just across the road from the building used by the British Administration. (Today this is the Casino in Rhodes' new town.) His co-habitation with Eve Cohen could be discreetly ignored by his employer, while the couple gained from staying within the perimeter security zone of the main building.  His book ''[[Reflections on a Marine Venus]]'' was inspired by this period and was a lyrical celebration of the island. It avoids more than a passing mention of the troubled war times.

[[File:LDurrellHouseRhodes.JPG|right|thumb|200px|alt=Durrell's house in Rhodes features Mediterranean architecture and has yellow-painted stucco or plaster walls. It is located on a paved asphalt street, with two cars parked parallel to it. The house is surrounded by several trees, shrubbery, roses, and flowering bushes.| Durrell's home in [[Rhodes]] from 20 May 1945 until 10 April 1947]]