Lawrence Durrell

This book follows Richard Pine's 1988 study of Lawrence Durrell, The Dandy and the Herald, and takes a closer look at the novelist's distinctive role in shaping the modern novel. Pine focuses on Durrell's private notebooks and diaries, drawing on a friendship of roughly twenty years to build a personal picture of the writer.

Durrell worked both as a novelist and as a British colonial official, and Pine presents a mind that moved between these two worlds. The portrait traces how Durrell's career unfolded across both.

A central concept is the Heraldic Universe, an imagined realm in which the artist holds complete authority. Pine uses this idea to explain how Durrell understood his own creative power.