David Frederick Attenborough grew up knowing that he wanted to work in natural history and has always been enormously grateful for the long and fruitful career that has taken him all over the globe.
Asked more than 60 years ago by BBC News if there was any other job he’d like to be doing, he made no bones about it. “As far as I’m concerned, no,” he said. “It’s absolutely clear, as far as I can make out, that I’m the luckiest person I’ve ever met.
“To be able to go where you want in the world, whenever you want, and do what you like – which is looking for animals and people and making films about them – what could be more marvellous?”
David was born, the middle of three brothers, on 8th May 1926 in Isleworth, London. He was raised in Leicester, growing up in a home that actively encouraged his curiosity for the natural world, with parents who allowed him to keep tropical fish, salamanders, grass snakes and hedgehogs.
His father, Frederick Attenborough, was the principal of University College, Leicester, and his mother, Mary, nurtured the intellectual and cultural interests of the family.
David’s elder brother Richard, who died in 2014 at the age of 90, was a celebrated actor and director, while his younger brother, John, was an executive at the Italian car company Alfa Romeo and also worked as a financial advisor. He died aged 84, at his home in Poole, Dorset, in 2012.
David also had two “sisters” of sorts because during the war, the family took in two German Jewish siblings, Irene and Helga Bejach, who were orphaned. The pair lived with them for seven years before moving to the the US once the war ended, to live with an uncle. David has described the kindness shown to the girls as “a credit to my parents” and said they were “my sisters, really”.
Helga’s letters and diaries from her time in England have been released by her daughters to Leicester University and, in 2020, Sir David hosted a reunion for the descendants of both families – where, rather fittingly, it emerged that one of Helga’s grandsons had been inspired by him to become an environmentalist.
One of David’s first memorable encounters with wildlife was for a money-making scheme. In a 1963 interview, he recalled learning that, aged around 11, the zoology department at his father’s university was in need of some newts. “The head of the department was doing a series of experiments on their diet – she required 30 newts per week,” he explained. “I got wind of this and asked how much was being paid per newt – it was something astonishing like sixpence. So I undertook to supply her, which I did,” he recalled.
“What she didn’t know was that I found them five yards outside her laboratory, in a pond. I used to go at night when she’d gone home, fish them out and take them to the laboratory in the morning.”
David attended Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester, winning a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge in 1945 to study geology and zoology. After a short stint editing science text books for kids, his first attempt to join the BBC, as a radio producer, failed when he got passed over in 1950, the same year that he married Jane Ebsworth Oriel, with whom he went on to have two children, Robert and Susan.
Aged just 24, his CV stayed on file and attracted the attention of Mary Adams, who was in the process of setting up the Corporation’s brand new television service.
David, like many others at that time, did not own a TV and had only watched one programme in his life. But he happily accepted a place on the three-month training course and went on to become a producer from 1952, with his early projects including the quiz Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? and the three-part Animal Patterns, which featured creatures from London Zoo.
It was through this programme that he met Jack Lester, who ran the zoo’s reptile house, and the pair decided to make a more ambitious series about an animal-collecting expedition. The result was Zoo Quest, first broadcast in 1954, which combined live studio presentation with footage shot on location for the first time.
“From childhood I have been fascinated by the natural world and I was lucky enough to make wildlife programmes from early on in my career,” he once explained. When the pair of them set off for Africa, it was intended that Jack would present and David would act as producer/director but fate had other ideas.
He recalls: “Jack became very ill immediately afterwards. But my boss said, ‘well Attenborough, you’re the only other person who was there. You’ll go and do it’. I had to appear because there was nobody else to do that job. So, quite unintentionally, I appeared on television.”
Zoo Quest brought chimpanzees, pythons and birds of paradise into viewers’ living rooms for the first time and showed that natural history could attract enormous audiences. It ran every year until 1963, which is when Sir David embarked on the middle phase of his career at the BBC, in management. He was extraordinarily good at this – as will be explored – but always knew he wanted to get back out on the road. “I longed to return to filming wildlife,” he recently explained, with his trademark simplicity.
As Controller of BBC2, one of things David was responsible for was overseeing the first ever colour broadcasts in Europe, and he was proud to have beaten the rival German broadcasters by three whole weeks. “That was a huge step and required new transmitters, new cameras, new everything,” he remembered. “Which was very exciting. I had the responsibility of trying to persuade the public that colour television was marvellous – the sets were quite expensive.
“I knew in my heart that the really great series was going to be one on natural history. All the loveliest creatures and fascinating behaviours you’d never thought of, we could cover that. Nothing could compare with the wonders of colour television.”
He commissioned the critically-acclaimed series Civilisation, written and presented by art historian Kenneth Clark, about the entire history of Western art and architecture, and The Ascent of Man, presented by humanist scientist Jacob Bronowski, soon followed. These ambitious, expensive landmark series were a new kind of television documentary which had simply never been seen before. In David, it sparked the idea for Life on Earth, the biggest series ever seen on TV about evolution and the natural world.
But at that point he had other work to do – his mission to make BBC2’s output stand out from what other networks were offering led to a portfolio of programmes that would define the channel’s identity for many decades to come. Music, the arts, archaeology, experimental comedy, travel, drama, sport, business, science and natural history all found a place in the weekly schedules while he was at the helm.
Call My Bluff, The Money Programme and The Old Grey Whistle Test were all born during this period, along with snooker series Pot Black, which was an ideal opportunity to show off the merits of colour television.
By now BBC Director of Programmes and overseeing both the main channels, David was a particular innovator in the world of comedy. The was best demonstrated by his decision to commission Monty Python’s Flying Circus, a cult sketch show which turned John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman and Terry Gilliam into superstars.
The series, celebrating British eccentricity, became a global phenomenon, inspiring generations of comedians around the world while in Britain, Python became part of the nation’s cultural DNA.
But even with all that under his belt, David still yearned to get back to making natural history programmes full-time – and he simply couldn’t shake his desire to make a major landmark natural history series. “I wanted to do a series which would tell the development of the history of life of evolution – starting from the simplest animals and going right the way through until you ended up with monkeys apes and humanity,” he explained.
Realising he couldn’t undertake the huge challenge of what would become Life on Earth while also running BBC1 and BBC2 he was faced with a choice. And the answer to what he should do soon presented itself – because it became clear he was expected to apply for the role of BBC director general, which he thought was “all about finance and politicians”.
Elder brother Richard once explained how his brother, whom he fondly called Dave, reacted to that particular career crossroads, remembering him being filled with horror at the prospect of going up another rung of the corporate ladder. “He said ‘me, behind a desk? I can’t do that, can I?’ I said ‘you’d be a bloody fool if you accepted it, you should go on doing what you’re marvellous at and what gives you pleasure.’”
Looking back now, David is happy that he made the right decision. “I wouldn’t have been any good,” he said in a BBC documentary which aired just a few days ago. “I don’t have political skills. I may know about birds of paradise but I certainly don’t know about prime ministers.”
And so, in 1973, he resigned from the BBC and his first series as a freelance broadcaster, working with the BBC’s Natural History Unit, was Eastwards with Attenborough. Shot largely in Indonesia, he’d wanted to travel to Asia because, at that point, almost all international nature documentaries had been filmed in Africa.
And that wasn’t all. Long before Bear Grylls slept in a camel carcass, David was trekking through uncharted wilderness to film some of the remotest people on earth. Freed from his role as a BBC executive, he turned explorer, making The Tribal Eye about people whose living arrangements were so isolated that in some cases they hadn’t ever seen a European before David’s arrival. He immersed himself in their cultures, wearing nothing but a loin cloth while filming in the Solomon Islands, in a bid to help viewers understand both the diversity and universality of the human experience.
But Life on Earth was still bubbling under and by 1976 the 13-parter had been commissioned and gone into production, marking a turning point in his career.
“I had to write 13 one-hour programmes before we shot a foot,” he recalled in the recent film to mark his 100th birthday. “I had to work the entire series out – that was a very pleasant thing to do. I knew as I sat down with a blank sheet of paper and put ‘Brazil’, I’d got a ticket to the Amazon! I mean, what a privilege.”
No-one had ever attempted a natural history series on this scale before and it involved a three-year trip around the world, encompassing 40 countries across a million miles, to film more than 600 species. Everything had to be organised by post, which meant the trips were many months in the making. Along the way, the crew encountered multiple challenges, including a coup in the Comoros, being shot at in Rwanda and threatened by Saddam Hussein’s army in Iraq.
“There was one series that changed everything, Life on Earth,” he said recently. “That was a turning point in my life really.” Eventually watched by 500 million people worldwide, it confirmed David’s reputation as the most successful and influential wildlife filmmaker of our time.
One of the many challenges involved trying to film the first animal with a backbone, the prehistoric and rare coelacanth fish, which was once thought to have been extinct, but has existed for more than 400million years.
When they arrived on the Comoros Islands off the east coast of Africa they ran into trouble because there had been a coup and their filming permissions had been revoked. Luckily David, who spoke French very well, managed to charm them and the necessary permissions were granted once again, but the only coelacanth fish they could find was dead, in a case in a bar.
Most of the team gave up and moved on but “brave and slightly crazy” underwater cameraman Peter Scoones stayed on, just as a particularly elderly specimen was caught and released into the harbour.
This “poor old thing” was on its last legs, David says, but it was still hugely exciting because it played a key part in evolutionary history and was a filming first. Getting footage of this species ended up being quite a scoop for David, who saw that footage as a key moment for Life on Earth. Now he laughs: “It was the first time it had ever been filmed alive – but it was only just!”
Another challenge presented itself when they were trying to show off the extraordinary geology of the Grand Canyon. Having decided to ride donkeys down to the bottom, it was only once they’d set off that he started to struggle. “I discovered I was allergic to the dust that comes from donkey’s fur and by the time we got to the bottom my eyes were almost closed.” Their was no question of the filming not continuing however, and so the close-up shots were abandoned and, in those scenes, David can only be seen from a great distance.
There was jubilation when the team managed to capture the first footage of lions making a kill. At this time there was very little filming of big cats in the wild and David was extremely keen to capture the first full hunting sequence.
Cameraman Hugh Miles remembers being in the Boro Boro crater, in Tanzania, with a Land Rover parked in such a way that it might entice one of the lionesses hunting a wildebeest to use it as cover. The plan worked a treat and David says: “I remember them coming back fizzing with excitement, saying ‘we’ve got it!’ They knew it was the best, truest lion hunt that had been on television until that date.”
And there was also, of course, the iconic filming of David in Rwanda, nestled in with the mountain gorillas, an iconic sequence which he describes as “one of the most privileged moments of my life”. He credits Dian Fossey for her painstaking conservation work with the gorillas, saying that it would never have happened without her.
He also credits cool-headed cameraman Martin Saunders with saving the day when army rebels tried to take the footage off them as they tried to leave the country. “Realising there was a danger that the film we had shot, which we were absolutely thrilled to death about, was going to be confiscated – he changed the labels on the film cans.” This meant that the cans that were confiscated contained nothing at all.
And so it was that Life on Earth became a success beyond even his wildest expectations. ”We were very gratified,” he says now. “It did attract a very big audience – and they clearly felt that this was something out of the ordinary. You had a wonderful feeling that when you saw those programmes, everyone in the country who had a colour television set would be doing it as well.”
One of the young producers who worked on the series was Rodger Jackman, who spent many painstaking hours filming a male frog which incubates its babies inside its throat and then burps them into life. Looking back on Life on Earth he feels quite emotional about having worked with the great David Attenborough. “It was absolutely and utterly life changing,” he says. “It was like being a surfer who caught a wave and that wave just didn’t stop rolling for 30 years.”
David’s career was huge, but he has told how it impacted on his family life, which he regarded as precious, coming in between long spells of being away from home. “It was increasingly hard, particularly when you have a family,” he said a few years ago. “Four months was as long as I ever went away.”
Nevertheless, he knows it was tough for his wife and children at times. “If you have a child of six or eight and you miss three months of his or her life, it’s irreplaceable. You miss something,” he explained in 2017. “There used to be family jokes. You know, ‘You were never there. You don’t remember that, Father, do you, because you weren’t there!’”
When he was knighted in 1985, he took his wife Jane and daughter Susan with him because Robert, now 74, emigrated to Australia in the early 80s, where he became a senior lecturer in bioanthropology.
David was married to Jane for 47 years before her death in 1997, aged 70, from a brain haemorrhage. He was away filming in New Zealand at the time but rushed back – she was in a coma when he got to the hospital but the doctor told him to hold her hand, and she gave his fingers a squeeze. “The focus of my life, my anchor, had gone,” he wrote in his memoir. “Now I was lost.”
He noted that in moments of “deep, deep grief” the natural world provided the “only consolation”. Asked a few years ago how Jane’s death had affected him, he replied: “Profoundly, of course. Losing your wife is a traumatic and devastating experience which casts a long shadow.”
He is grateful to Susan for taking on the role of looking after him at the family home in Richmond-upon-Thames, where he still lives. Admitting that he’s a terrible cook, he explained: “My daughter, a head teacher of a primary school, quite soon came to sort me out in terms of cooking and she now runs the house and so on. So that’s a blessing and a godsend for which I am profoundly grateful and very, very lucky.”
Since Life on Earth there have been many, many more programmes for David. He narrated every episode of Wildlife on One, which ran for 253 episodes between 1977 and 2005, pulling in 10million viewer at its peak. He also provided the voiceover for more than 50 episodes of Natural World, the flagship wildlife series for BBC2. But Life on Earth had whetted the BBC’s appetite for the big, blue-chip, landmark series that would become the hallmark of his career.
By 1993 he was past normal retirement age, at 67, but showed no sign of slowing down. He spent the best part of 20 years on the “life” series which covered every major animal and plant group, culminating with Life in Cold Blood in 2008, which covered reptiles and amphibians.
There are several producers with whom he has worked repeatedly since the dawn of the new millennium, and Alastair Fothergill is one of them. When he started making Blue Planet in 2001, about marine life, he asked David to narrate, deciding not to have an on-screen presenter because of the difficulties with communicating when filming underwater.
It went so well that the same team reunited for Planet Earth in 2006, which became the biggest nature documentary ever made for television and the first BBC wildlife series to be shot in high definition. Then Blue Planet II came in 2017 and is credited with helping draw huge attention to plastic pollution in the ocean – also earning David a spot at the Glastonbury Festival.
There has been Green Planet, about plants, Frozen Planet, about the poles, and Our Planet, for Netflix, which aimed to capture a different audience to those who normally watch natural history programmes.
Throughout his 90s he has eased off on the foreign travel but not on the number of programmes he is involved in, narrating many great series for the BBC. Last year these included the six-part Kingdom, about animal families in Zambia, and the five-part Parenthood, chronicling the lives of different animal families across six continents.
After Life on Earth, in 1979, he was asked how he was going to follow such a triumph and he laughed that he was “not planning to retire”. An astonishing 47 years later, he has remained true to his word
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