Conservationist and author Gerald Durrell and Lee McGeorge first met in 1977; two years later they were married. By the time Durrell died in 1995 they had travelled the world together on numerous conservation expeditions and co-written two books: A Practical Guide for the Amateur Naturalist, and Durrell in Russia. In 1978, a year after they first met, Gerald Durrell wrote a love letter to his future wife.