Durham was the eldest of nine children; her father, Arthur Edward Durham, was a distinguished London surgeon. She attended Bedford College followed by the Royal Academy of Arts to train as an artist. She exhibited widely and contributed a number of detailed drawings to the amphibia and reptiles volume of the Cambridge Natural History.
Balkan expeditions
After the death of her father, Durham took on the responsibilities of caring for her sick mother for several years. It proved an exhausting experience; when she was 37, her doctor recommended that she should undertake a foreign vacation to recuperate. She took a trip by sea down the coast of Dalmatia, travelling from Trieste to Kotor and then overland to Cetinje, the capital of Montenegro. It gave her a taste for southern Balkan life that she was to retain for the rest of her life. Durham travelled extensively in the Balkans over the next twenty years, focusing particularly on Albania, which then was one of the most isolated and undeveloped areas of Europe. She worked in a variety of relief organisations, painted and wrote, and collected folklore and folk art. She contributed frequently to the journal Man and became a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Her writings, however, were to earn her particular fame. She wrote seven books on Balkan affairs, of which High Albania is the best known. It is still regarded as the pre-eminent guide to the customs and society of the highlands of northern Albania.
Serbian atrocities
In 1912, Durham travelled to southern Kosovo but was banned from entering by the Serb soldiers, and when asking why, they stated that "We have not left a nose on an Albanian there. It's not a pretty sight for a British officer". Durham joined Anglo-Albanian Association founded in 1913 to support the Albanian cause in Great Britain and to promote recognition of the Independent Albania. In 1928, Durham wrote that refugees from Gusinje had fled to Shkodër after Serb soldiers had thrown food on a bridge to attract hungry children and then thrown a bomb in the midst of them.
Controversy
After her pro-Serb phase, Durham came to identify closely with the Albanian cause and championed the unity and independence of the Albanian people. She earned a reputation as a difficult and eccentric person, and was strongly criticised by – and criticised in turn – advocates of a Yugoslav state, who supported the incorporation of Albanian-populated parts of Kosovo into Yugoslavia. She became increasingly anti-Serb, denouncing what she termed "Serb vermin" for having "not created a Jugoslavia but have carried out their original aim of making Great Serbia.... Far from being liberated the bulk of people live under a far harsher rule than before." Other, more pro-Serb British intellectuals sharply criticised her views. Rebecca West included Durham in her description of the sort of traveller who came back "with a pet Balkan people established in their hearts as suffering and innocent, eternally the massacree and never the massacrer," and then went on to say: "The Bulgarians, as preferred by some, and the Albanians, as championed by others, strongly resembled Sir Joshua Reynolds's picture of the Infant Samuel." R.W. Seton-Watson commented that "the fact is that while always denouncing 'Balkan mentality', she is herself exactly what she means by the word." For their part, however, the Albanians held Durham in high regard. They dubbed her "Mbretëresha e Malësoreve" – the "Queen of the Highlanders." She was given an embroidered waistcoat by the government to thank her for lobbying the British government on behalf of the occupied city ofKorçë. She was well received in the Albanian highlands and passed unmolested despite being a lone female traveller. She benefited from the Albanian tradition of insuring a guest's safety, and from an ancient Albanian custom, the tradition of "Sworn virgins" – women who wore men's clothes and were regarded as protected individuals. When she died in 1944 she received high praise for her work from the exiled King Zog, who wrote: "She gave us her heart and she won the ear of our mountaineers." She is still regarded as something of a national heroine; in 2004, Albanian PresidentAlfred Moisiu described her as "one of the most distinguished personalities of the Albanian world during the last century"
Collections
Much of Durham's work was donated to academic collections following her death. Her papers are held by the Royal Anthropological Institute, London, her diaries are in the Bankfield Museum, Halifax along with her collections of Balkan costume and jewellery given in 1935. Further gifts of mostly Balkan artefacts were given to the British Museum in 1914 and to the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford and the Horniman Museum, London. Some items from her textile collection were displayed in a 2020 exhibition.
