Attenborough: a life on screen

Insurance Introduction

0:00Insurance isn't one-size-fits-all, and shopping for it shouldn't feel like squeezing into something that just doesn't fit. That's why drivers have enjoyed Progressive's Name Your Price tool for years. With the Name Your Price tool, you tell them what you want to pay, and they show you options that fit your budget. Enough hunting for discounts, trying to calculate rates, and tinkering with coverages. Maybe you're picking out your very first policy. Or maybe you're just looking for something that works better for you and your family. Either way, they make it simple to see your options.

0:32No guesswork, no surprises. Ready to see how easy and fun shopping for car insurance can be? Visit Progressive.com and give the Name Your Price tool a try. Take the stress out of shopping, and find coverage that fits your life. On your terms. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law.

Hiring Solution

0:54When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen, and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching, and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. The road to the NBA Finals ends here, with star guards setting the tone.

1:34The Cavs eye another upset, while the Knicks carry the dreams of all of New York. The Eastern Conference Finals continue on ESPN and ABC.

Zootopia 2

1:54Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney+. Let's go! Get ready for a new case. We're gonna crack this case and prove we're good, we're going to be partners of all time! New friends. You are... Gary the Snake. And your last name? The Snake. Dream Team. In new habitats. Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record-breaking phenomenon at home. You're clearly working at it. Zootopia 2. Now available on Disney Plus Rated PG.

David Attenborough Biography

2:29Today, the 8th of May, marks the 100th birthday of leading British documentary maker and natural historian David Attenborough. His TV credits, which span eight decades, include 1979's Pioneering Life on Earth, 1993's Life in the Freezer, and last year's Kingdom. But what's the longer history of wildlife broadcasting? What first inspired Attenborough to report back from the front lines of the natural world? And how has he shaped our understanding of the climate crisis?

Early Wildlife Broadcasting

3:00I caught up with media and cultural historian David Hendy to find out. David, thank you so much for being with us today on the History Extra podcast. We are talking in May 2026 to mark 100 years since the birth of David Attenborough, who's a name that many people listening to this podcast will know. He's one of the sort of giants of 20th and 21st century broadcasting here in the UK. So we're going to talk a little bit about some of the contributions he's made, both in terms of the TV medium, but also to our understanding of the world more generally.

3:34Before we get into all of that, though, I thought we should explore what documentaries on wildlife and on the natural world were like in the decades before he made this massive contribution. Can you, to start with, tell us about some of the pioneering efforts that were made in the early days of broadcasting to chart the world around us? Yeah, I mean, if we go really right back to the beginning of the BBC in the 1920s, there is sporadic attempts to interest the listener, as it was then before television, in animals,

4:08but really almost as sort of occasional entertainment rather than a sort of science or education. So the earliest examples we get of wildlife on the BBC are probably in programmes like Children's Hour. So, for instance, in November 1924, they had what was listed as zoo noises. So it was animal noises from the zoo. You had the famous aunties and uncles who presented Children's Hour. And one of them, Uncle Jeff, had a dog called George who would do a regular grand howl,

4:43as it was called. The other early example of wildlife on the BBC was the famous example of the cellist Beatrice Harrison, who would do her duets with the Nightingale. And that started in May 1924. Television comes along in the 1930s. Now, the BBC started its regular service in 1936, but it was running some experimental television services before that. So between 1932 and 1934, for instance, you have experimental television programmes from

5:17the basement studios of the brand new broadcasting house. And they were mostly variety shows, but they always seem to include circus animals who are brought in or exotic pets, for instance. So there'd be a boa constrictor or an alligator. One of the famous animals that appeared was Sally the seal, who arrived at the BBC on an open top Daimler and was shown on screen blowing into a saxophone and wiggling her flippers.

5:48So none of this was particularly serious. When television started properly in 1936, you had lots of sort of magazine programmes and variety shows and so on. And actually, the very first edition of perhaps the most popular programme before the war, Picture Page, had a Siamese cat called Prestwick Pertana as one of its guests. They even at one stage had eight live crocodiles in the studio, which involved the construction

6:20of a special water tank for warm water. So there were always animals there. But what we're talking about essentially, you know, in these early days is animals as entertainment, really. And people would come onto the TV set and they'd talk a little bit about them, but they were kind of anthropomorphised very often or they were performing very often. So you wouldn't necessarily at this stage in those sort of first, particularly those first two decades, the 20s and the 30s, you wouldn't really think of it as natural history programming

6:52in the way that we think of with David Attenborough. And as I mentioned, David was born in 1926, around the same sort of time as some of these pioneering efforts.

Attenborough's Early Life

7:02What do we know about his early life and family and the ways in which it shaped his later career and interests? So David was the middle son of three boys and born into a comfortable middle class home. But it was socially liberal. It was politically progressive. It was Fabian in spirit, if you like. His father was a university academic. His mother had been very involved in the suffragette movement as a campaigner for social causes, a justice of the peace, involved in setting up the Marriage Guidance Council and so on.

7:37So it was a household where there was an almost evangelical belief in public service. You were expected to make a difference to the world in some way. And this was a family that, for instance, during the Second World War, took in two young Jewish refugees who came to Britain as part of the Kindertransport program. So that was the kind of family background. Then, of course, David went on to Cambridge to study natural sciences. So that is very much his sort of academic training.

8:10And he then did some national service in the Navy. And it's interesting that at that stage, you could tell from how he writes in his autobiography, he fancied that national service in the Navy would allow him to travel. That's what he really wanted to do. Actually, he spent his national service in the Navy stuck on a mothballed aircraft carrier on the Firth of 4th. So he didn't get the travel that he wanted. But that national service was just long enough for him to forget about the idea of carrying on with postgraduate research and perhaps,

8:46you know, the pathway towards an academic career, a PhD and so on. And actually, afterwards, what he did was he went into publishing, no particular vocation. He was a junior editorial assistant for an educational publisher. And he says this about it in his autobiography. He says, it's not the way I wanted to spend the rest of my life. So in his early 20s, he was wanting to travel. He was wanting to make a difference in the public world.

9:18He was wanting to kind of explain. He probably had a kind of yearning to teach in some sort of way. And educational publishing, he realised, was not going to give him any of that. It's really interesting, this sort of formative section of his career. And he's a figure who is largely now known by his association with the BBC.

Attenborough's BBC Career

9:38And you've mentioned that a bit already. At what point did his longstanding connection with the BBC first begin in earnest? And in what capacity was that? In 1950, he was 24 years old, working in publishing, not necessarily very happily. And he saw an ad in The Times for the job of a BBC radio talks producer. He applied for it and didn't even get an interview. But what he did get was a phone call, which he wasn't expecting, from someone called Mary Adams.

10:12Mary Adams worked in BBC television. She was previously a geneticist in Oxford, so with scientific background. But she was running a department of television talks in BBC television. And she phoned him up and said, look, I know you didn't get the job in radio, but we think you might fit in here in television. And David Attenborough explained very politely on the telephone that he didn't actually know much about television. He didn't even have a television set at home.

10:43He said he'd once watched a TV play at his in-law's house. That was roughly the extent of what he knew. But in any case, Mary Adams clearly saw something in him. And he was offered the chance to join a three-month training course. No guarantee of a job at the end of it. And that was in 1952. He was also given a chance while he was doing the training to do some interviewing on screen. So he stepped into a sort of celebrity chat show, I suppose it was, really.

11:19Joan Gilbert's Weekend Diary, it was called. And he was interviewing an Olympic long-distance runner. It was his first time ever in front of the cameras on TV. And he obviously didn't really particularly enjoy doing that. And afterwards, Mary Adams basically decided that he wasn't going to be a presenter at any point in the future. His teeth were too big, was her judgment. But she did think that he had potential as a producer.

11:52So as far as she was concerned, and as far as David Attenborough was concerned, in the 1950s, his future was working behind the scenes in television. And he did actually get a permanent job, even though there was no guarantee of that at the end of the training course. He became a talks assistant and then an assistant producer in the television talks department. And it was an interesting department for him to be in because it was full of people who had no particular background.

12:22You know, in light entertainment, it would be people with a background in the entertainment industry or vaudeville or something like that. In drama, it would be people with a background in theatre, television talks. He found himself joining a group of people that included, for instance, a research physicist, a journalist, a filmmaker, a painter, a historian, an art critic, even an expert on Icelandic sagas. So it was an eclectic group of people that he was joining. And his job really there in talks was to kind of do almost anything that fell into the category of nonfiction.

13:01His actual first production that he was responsible for fully was actually a 10-minute program about the discovery of the coelacanth. You know, that rare fish which has been described as a living fossil. So, in fact, in the end, his first production was actually natural history. But he would have to do a whole range of programs, talks, politics, current affairs, quizzes, travel programs. He even at one stage produced a short ballet about a fishmonger, believe it or not.

13:36That's incredible, that detail. I mean, it's an interesting quirk of this story because I'm talking to you today from Bristol and Bristol's famous for its natural history unit, which I think I'm right in saying was founded in 1957. But I also think I'm right in saying that David Attenborough didn't initially work for that department at all. Is that right? Yes. David Attenborough said at one stage that he felt spiritually as if he was part of the natural history unit. And his big epic wildlife series that he's famous for were very much in collaboration with the natural history unit.

14:09But no, he was he was in television talks, a very different department based in London. It was a department that did do some wildlife programs. And perhaps the example that comes to mind, nothing to do with the natural history program. Something that was done with television talks and David Attenborough was Zoo Quest, for instance, which was a series that ran in from 1954. And it involved a senior keeper from from London Zoo who would head off with David Attenborough and go to somewhere like New Guinea or Madagascar.

14:45First program actually involved going to Sierra Leone. And they'd sort of go hunting in the undergrowth for some sort of rare animal, a snake or a bird or a monkey or whatever, and then bring that animal back to the studio, having tracked it down. And the series Zoo Quest would include a series of short films that were shot on location so viewers could see the animal being caught and see the animal in its own natural habitat. And then there would be a live chat in the studio with the zookeeper, which was meant to be informative.

15:19I mean, it was sometimes a little bit chaotic because, you know, to work with an animal live in the studio was an unpredictable thing. It also conveyed a sort of impression of some sort of Victorian style animal capturing expedition. But, you know, there were some innovative techniques that were involved even then. David Attenborough was trying to get the BBC to use 16mm cameras, for instance. The standard at the time, which the BBC film people ferociously defended, was 35mm because that was the gold standard.

15:53He rightly made the point that 16mm was going to be lighter and more portable and you needed that if you were filming in the undergrowth or the jungle. So there was a way in which David Attenborough was feeling his way into wildlife programmes in London, even before the natural history unit is evolving in Bristol.

BBC Two and Color TV

16:18And after he took some time away from the BBC, he returned full time in 1965 in what might to some listeners, I suppose, be a surprising capacity in that he became controller of BBC Two, which was the BBC's new TV channel that had launched the previous year. Can you talk us through his role in this and in evolving that channel? I mean, I think it's very interesting that, you know, David Attenborough is in some sense, he's a biologist, he's a zoologist, but he is also a broadcaster.

16:51And he's someone who actually is really immersed in and interested in and respects the craft of television as much as he respects science. And so I think in many ways, if you if you understand that and understand his involvement in a whole range of television, him becoming controller of BBC Two, a kind of managerial impresario position is less surprising. And he arrives at a really, really important time for the BBC.

17:22So, you know, the BBC is getting more licence fee money coming in in the 1960s. You've got a new director general, Hugh Carlton Green, who's who's sort of interested in blowing away the cobwebs and making programming more interesting and and sometimes more shocking and more controversial and so on. And he's he's encouraging programme makers to take risks. And when the BBC is awarded the second channel, BBC Two, you know, it comes at a moment of buoyancy and optimism.

17:53The new television centre has only recently opened. And Bill Cotton, one of the other great impresarios of the BBC at the time, said this new opulent television centre made us all walk just that little bit taller. Now, BBC Two launches in 1964 and the BBC has slightly overpromised the public and the press, the sort of riches that would be on offer. And in fact, in the end, there just weren't enough television programmes in the pipeline to be able to fulfil that promise.

18:25So BBC Two had a bit of a rough launch in 1964. And when its first controller, Michael Peacock, was was replaced and David Attenborough comes in in 1965, he said that it was the perfect moment to take over as controller of BBC Two. He said there was nowhere for it to go but up. And he was effectively given a blank sheet. One of his colleagues in television, Joanna Spicer, said that he created BBC Two in his own image.

18:57And his own image, as far as the BBC was concerned, was kind of something of a Renaissance man, as a polymath, if you like. Yes, he had a scientific background, but he was also quite knowledgeable and interested in music. He was interested in the arts and so on. And what David Attenborough said was that as controller of BBC Two, one of the measures of success was, as he put it, the width of the spectrum that the programmes covered. So he was interested in that breadth and that variety.

19:29So, yes, under him, you had archaeology programmes. Series like Chronicle were introduced that had a global approach. You had Horizon as a general science programme. In drama, you had the classics, Tolstoy, George Eliot and so on. Classical music, you had Stravinsky conducting his own Firebird at the Royal Festival Hall. And at the other end of the spectrum, if you like, you had the old grey whistle test with rock music. So variety and breadth was very much what he was interested in.

20:00The other thing that was a key development under Attenborough as controller of BBC Two was the introduction of colour. Now, it didn't really come in properly until it was actually the Wimbledon tennis tournament in 1967 when it really kind of came in. But the process of turning black and white into colour had become something of a kind of tortuous mystery for BBC engineers and they were trying to work it out. David Attenborough, as well as being controller of BBC Two, sat on the working group that tried to work out how colour was going to be introduced.

20:36And the kind of solution was found in introducing it on BBC Two, which used a 625 line system, as opposed to, say, BBC One, which used a 405 line system. So actually what that meant was that if programme makers wanted to do programmes in colour, and many of them did, it was very exciting, the prospect of doing that, they would have to do it for BBC Two. So, you know, all of a sudden, as controller of BBC Two, he was finding, you know, lots of creative programme makers making lots of offers of exciting new series and so on for him on BBC Two.

21:15And it was liberating as well to be a second channel because he knew that BBC One did all the heavy lifting when it came to the ratings battle with ITV. And BBC Two was liberated, if you like, from needing those really, really big audience figures. And the audience was smaller, but it was also judged to be more committed. David Attenborough said this, actually, which I think is really, really interesting. He said, a million eyes on BBC Two is worth four million on ITV or BBC One.

21:50So, you know, the audience might be smaller, but it's an audience that has deliberately chosen to spend time with a programme or a series. So even though he wasn't in the field, he wasn't in the jungle or the savannah or whatever, this was a period where I think he was enjoying being, you know, a broadcasting impresario, if you like. And by the sounds of it, trying out new things and having the freedom to experiment and push the medium forward, do we get a sense of what the impact of BBC Two was, even though, as you said, it had a smaller but more committed audience?

22:22As commissioner, he was capable of coming up with some big series that I think helped establish BBC Two as an important part of the kind of media ecology within Britain. So I suppose the big examples that come straight to mind is 1969, Civilisation, A Personal View, presented by Kenneth Clark, which, you know, was conceived partly as a showcase for colour, but also conceived by David Attenborough from sort of his own background.

22:53You know, he described how, you know, he described how, when he was growing up, he would buy magazines that came as part works, you know, a series of 12 or 13, like, for instance, H.G. Wells, who'd done a, you know, a history series of magazines, this weekly instalment that would build up to something that really counted for something, something that was accessible but authoritative. And Civilisation established that sort of magnum opus, big format series that established the format for at least a decade and a half.

23:28And after Civilisation, there was The Ascent of Man, and that's got an interesting genesis as well, because it starts off with a complaint from one of David Attenborough's colleagues, Aubrey Singer, who runs sort of science and features in BBC television. And he looked at Civilisation, and he said, well, how can you have a series called Civilisation that doesn't actually deal with science? So he demanded a new series that would showcase science, and he had a presenter in mind, Jacob Brunofsky, another polymath.

24:03And David Attenborough, you know, agreed, and he helped secure Jacob Brunofsky by inviting him to a screening of Civilisation, which Brunofsky responded to by saying, where is the science? So it worked. So these big series helped establish BBC Two as the kind of the home of not just the quirky and the marginal and the peripheral, but of big, ambitious series that established television as accessible but serious as well.

24:36And there were some guiding principles, I think, throughout this time at BBC Two. You know, he said that it was about finding new approaches and neglected subjects, but also nothing, he said, in the schedule should be mindless. So under David Attenborough, you've got the sense in which BBC Two is, it's not just interesting, it's not just quirky or unusual, it is actually ambitious. There is quality there as well as variety. Springtime is my catalyst to switch out the major players in my closet and take stock of what I have and haven't been wearing over the last year.

25:17It's a great time to get a bit more intentional about what you're wearing day to day. And if I'm getting rid of anything, I want to make sure that I'm replacing it with quality pieces. And I've been turning to Quince for that so often recently. Their clothes are made really well and priced even better, so it makes shopping for and wearing their pieces simple. Quince uses premium materials like organic cotton and ultra-soft denim, and their lightweight linen pants, dresses, and tops start at just $30. I have a few pairs of their 100% European linen pants.

25:48They come in a variety of colors and patterns. It has an elastic waist and a pretty wide leg, so they're really, really comfortable, but they also look super nice. So I think they're the perfect, versatile pair of pants for spring and summer. Everything at Quince is priced 50-80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So you're paying for the quality and craftsmanship of the products, but not a brand markup. Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to Quince.com slash History Extra for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

26:21Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash History Extra for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash History Extra. Expedia and VisitScotland invite you to come step into centuries of history that await in Scotland. Castles steeped in legend walk along cobblestone streets. Come share the warmth of stories passed down through generations.

26:52This is a place with a past that is fully present today and all yours to explore. Plan your Scottish escape today at Expedia.com slash VisitScotland. Hey Fidelity, how can I remember to invest every month? With the Fidelity app, you can choose a schedule and set up recurring investments in stocks and ETFs. Oh, that sounds easier than I thought. You got this. Yeah, I do. Now, where did I put my keys?

27:23You will find them where you left them. Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC, member NYSE SIPC.

27:34I'd like to stay with the idea you mentioned just then about there being various things that helped set in place what was needed to make what I think is one of the most foundational programs we'll talk about, which was 1979's Life on Earth.

Life on Earth Production

27:48What else had to happen? What other developments were there that allowed such a groundbreaking series to be made? I mean, there are lots of sort of scientific and technical developments that we'll come on to. But I think actually the starting point that actually sometimes gets forgotten about life on Earth is that actually it was revolutionary most in terms of its idealism. It's actually kind of conception in terms of its ambitiousness. Instead of it being 13 episodes, each of which had a separate theme or separate subject, it's coherent over 13 episodes.

28:25It's shaped by David Attenborough's argument. You know, it's got a narrative structure. It's got a story arc across 13 episodes. It is, as David Attenborough described at the time, it's the story of evolution. So I think that's one of the things that is innovative about it, to establish. And he had to argue for this amongst colleagues to sell the idea of the program, to say, look, actually, no, this is an argument. And when he wrote the initial script for it, he wrote it as if nothing would be impossible.

28:57So he would follow the argument and then everything that happened afterwards had to respond to that argument that he developed. If he mentioned a certain animal in a certain place, there had to be a film crew that would have to go and film that. And immediately it starts to develop into something which is going to span multiple locations. It's going to be extraordinarily expensive and ambitious and complicated to produce. So that means there's a whole new set of techniques and production routines that have to be invented.

29:33How do you deal with multiple film crews? How do you get film crews around to different locations? How do you get the presenter to different locations? So that involves recruiting and training up a whole series of separate film crews. This has to be something that can only be done when international travel is easier. So the growth of airlines and easy travel and cheaper travel and so on is also something that makes life on Earth possible in a way that even 10 or 20 years before that wouldn't have been possible.

30:07And then, of course, you've got the technical challenges. Now, if the series is essentially the story of evolution, you're probably not going to get to the big animals, you know, the big cats and the giant lizards and the things that people actually are used to watching on TV. You're not going to get to them until maybe even halfway through the series. There's a lot of evolution that has to happen and be talked about before that. So then you've got the challenge of a series about wildlife where you're going to confront the mass television audience with several episodes which are about microorganisms, sea snails, shrimps, hoverflies.

30:49And that, of course, is a huge challenge. So there's a lot of work that's being done on how do you film these creatures in close up, these tiny, tiny creatures. And, you know, there are new sets that need to be built, tanks, new lighting techniques, new camera lenses and so on. And this involves not just the natural history unit, but the BBC working with groups like Oxford Scientific Films who really, really develop new techniques of backlighting and filming. So that the first few episodes of Life on Earth are kind of quite stunning in a way that perhaps viewers didn't necessarily expect.

31:28Instead of actually seeing a herd of wildebeest, what they're seeing is tiny sea creatures beautifully illuminated in close up. And that in itself becomes, you know, an extraordinary revelation. So there's a series of things that need to be done to make this possible, organisationally, editorially and technically. Do you know what the reaction to the series was at the time? There was very, very positive reaction from critics. And, you know, for instance, someone like Clive James, who was the Observer's television critic at the time, raves about the series.

32:02So that critical response is pretty impressive straight away, even before the series is finished. I recall, for instance, Clive James saying that actually, in many ways, watching some of those first episodes was like experiencing vertigo. And that sense in which you are witnessing something which is extraordinary, it's new, it's clever, it's illuminating. And he also, Clive James, you know, paid tribute to David Attenborough himself as someone who seemed to have that kind of ability to convey complex ideas very, very simply and seemingly spontaneously in a sort of authoritative but unassuming kind of way, which was part of his developing persona as a wildlife presenter.

32:52And it was over the coming decades that Attenborough became known as one of the foremost figures in this medium, in making this kind of programming. What are just some of the highlights of the documentaries that he made over those coming decades? I mean, we've almost lost count of the series that he made. But just to pick out a few, there is a sort of logic to how they develop. So, for instance, the next big series that he did after Life on Earth, Living Planet, was actually moving the focus away from animals and towards the environment.

33:26One description of it was, you know, fewer frogs, more deserts. And it starts to kind of convey that idea that there is an interconnectedness between animals and their environment, which is an important part of our understanding. A series like The Trials of Life then moves the focus onto animal behaviour. So it's interested, for instance, in mating rituals or how animals rear their young or how they feed, how they organise and so on.

33:57Then you've got 1993, Life in the Freezer. And that's a series that, you know, shows that even in the coldest place on Earth, Antarctica, you've got an abundant, if slightly perilous, ecosystem that can survive. As the series moves on, the importance of the ecosystem, I think, comes through very, very strongly. And there are some seminal moments in, you know, in the series. So Life in the Freezer, for instance, there's a moment that I think the public found both epic and slightly disturbing,

34:33where there's a very hungry nine foot long leopard seal that we see lying in wait, just as a young penguin slips into the water for its first ever swim. And we see the leopard seal pounce on this penguin with deadly effect. So there's very little sentimentalism in some of these series. And, you know, there are some extraordinary sort of sequences that captured the public imagination, as well as the moving quite rigorously through a series of kind of natural history themes.

35:11And it's worth pausing here to just think about that a bit more, isn't it? Because these are programmes, these are documentaries that had an enormous impact on the public, as you described there. What do you think is the skill that they have in being able to connect so readily with the wider public? There is a sense in the programmes as a whole that we're not just being kind of casually entertained, that there is an argument, that there is a narrative, there is a theme. So therefore, we can be captivated and entertained by extraordinary filming.

35:44And you're seeing the kind of things that you know you'd never be able to see in real life from around the world. So the set piece filming is extraordinary. And that is part of their impact on the public. But at the same time, what we're getting is that that serves the purpose of an argument, of a greater understanding about animals and their relationship with the environment that allows us to start to understand them on their own terms. There's a sort of dignity that is awarded to the wildlife through these programmes.

36:19And then, of course, there is David Attenborough himself, who is central to the appeal of these programmes. And part of the reason is that he's got a sort of presentational sort of style that I think perhaps appeals to many television viewers. He's someone that we know and trust knows about the subject. He's not an imported celebrity who's merely doing a voiceover. But also, he comes across in many ways as having certain qualities that appeal.

36:57He's understated. He's willing to get messy. You know, we see him sort of scrambling through the undergrowth. We see him getting covered in bat guano. And nothing diminishes his enthusiasm when he comes face to face with animals. So, for instance, that incredibly famous scene in Life on Earth where he's being surrounded by gorillas. He's on a mountainside in Rwanda. And, you know, the original idea was that he's just there to explain the evolution of the opposable thumb

37:33while there are gorillas in the distant background. But then he suddenly looks down and he sees two baby gorillas playing with the laces on his shoes. And before he knows it, there's a large adult female gorilla patting him on the head. And he sort of finds this extraordinary ability to not be freaked out by it. More than that, I'm going to quote, actually, because I think this is actually really interesting. The camera runs and we see him and he says afterwards, he says, it was paradise.

38:08It was such a privileged delight to spend time with those gorillas. And he ad-libs and he said this while his life is in the hands of this adult female gorilla. He said, there is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than any other animal I know. And the gorilla is still caressing him at this point. And he says, it seems really very unfair that man should have chosen the gorilla to symbolize everything that is aggressive and violent

38:43when that is the one thing that the gorilla is not and that we are. And that was an ad-libbed comment that really contributed to the sort of specialness of that scene. And it said something important about not just observing animal behaviour, but having a respect for the kind of the variety of animal behaviour and understanding animals on their own terms. Over the years, it seems that his ability to become more explicitly campaigning has increased.

39:15Do you think that's fair to say? And how important do you think that work is? I think it is true. He has become more explicit about environmental causes and particularly climate breakdown. He did at one stage admit that he was initially sceptical about the role that humanity had on climate change. And he sort of puts down his change of mind to a particular point in 2004 when he listened to a lecture that convinced him that climate breakdown was largely man-made.

39:46I think the other thing that in some sense has always held him back just a little bit is that as a television professional, I think he embraces the idea that one shows rather than tells. You know, that great traditional documentary sort of saying is, you know, don't lecture people, just show and then people will learn. So I think to some extent the television maker in him has restrained him from being too explicit about it.

40:17But if you look at the arc of his career, particularly over the last 20 years or so, there's no doubt that he has become more and more explicit, more and more personally concerned about the effect of climate breakdown and human destruction. So, you know, you can start to see it in Planet Earth and Blue Planet. And then, of course, there are some series that he's done that are very explicit. Saving Planet Earth. I mean, the title itself, his series, not for the BBC, but for Netflix, Our Planet, was much more explicit about human destruction of the environment.

40:51The Living Planet, the very last episode in that series, was entirely focused on the human destruction of the environment. So I think, you know, it has become more explicit. I think one of the things that I would say is that there is value to those series where it wasn't explicit, but it was only implicit. Because one of the things that came through constantly, even in those early series that didn't directly address environmental issues, was the interconnectedness of wildlife and environment.

41:25So that if an environment changes, then a whole ecosystem is threatened. I think that comes through very, very strongly, even when it's not an explicit discussion of climate breakdown. The other thing that I think is worth remembering with David Attenborough is that even though he's become much more explicit about the threat of climate breakdown and about human destruction of the environment, you know, deep sea fishing and dragging of ocean beds and so on,

41:57he, perhaps because of his upbringing, has always felt that there's an optimistic side to the story, that human destruction is counterbalanced by human ingenuity. And, you know, it's not impossible that human ingenuity might get us out of the mess that we're in. And for more on how history might be able to tackle the climate crisis from historian Peter Frankopan and broadcaster Chris Packham, you can listen to a conversation that I did with the two of them back in 2024.

42:29I've included a link to that in the description for this episode. But returning to David Attenborough, David, do you think that it's his humanism that's one of the key traits that has made him so popular for such a long time? And are there others that we should put alongside it? Part of his success is a coincidence of sort of time and place, I think. You know, his professional life has coincided with several decades in which television flourishes as a mass medium. And in Britain, you know, you have the BBC and you have the Natural History Unit.

43:02And, you know, David Attenborough said about the BBC, he said, one of the things that distinguishes this country and makes me want to live here. So he believes that, you know, the programs that he made, some of those big early series could only have been made in Britain by the BBC and Natural History Unit. That investment in quality, the interest in range, the commitment to the length of time it takes to make these series. I mean, you know, life on Earth and so on took three years of solid filming and travel and so on.

43:36So I think that part of his success and his longevity is down to the fact that he he's been lucky in one sense to live and work at a time when both the BBC and television have been flourishing in this country and have committed to the idea of investing in quality programs. But I think there's there is something about the man himself as well. Gene Seaton, who's the official historian of the BBC, described him as a public service animal and that there is something inherently British about his manner, his unassuming manner.

44:14He wears his knowledge and his expertise lightly, doesn't mind if things go wrong, particularly there's a sort of understated sort of spontaneity about him that allows him to deliver and share knowledge in a way that is not at all patrician or handed down from the heights. So, you know, in many ways, he's he's very different to, for instance, someone like Kenneth Clark presenting civilisation, that that patrician approach.

44:46There's a sort of boyish enthusiasm that he also manages to convey in some way. So, you know, there's something about the man and his manner. We trust his expertise. But there's also something about the institutional support and his understanding of what makes good television. So, you know, he's he's a naturalist. He knows about animals, but he also knows about what works on television. And finally, how do you think he has changed our relationship and our understanding of the natural world over the decades he's been working?

Attenborough's Impact

45:21It's always very, very tricky to assess the impact of something like television on public understanding of anything, really. I think all I would say is it's very difficult to believe that he hasn't helped us to understand the natural world in a better way. And I think there are certain elements to that. What I mean by that is that I think that if you go back to the earliest wildlife programmes before David Attenborough, they tended to be sentimental.

45:51They tended to think of animals as performers. We tended to anthropomorphise animals and find them amusing and so on. David Attenborough has consistently given us animals on their own terms so that we understand them as they are. I think he's also consistently helped us to learn about the interconnectedness of animals, the way in which they relate to each other, that, you know, if one species or animal suffers or disappears, then a whole ecosystem is affected.

46:27Similarly, if an environment changes, the rains don't fall, there is a drought, then a whole ecosystem is affected. And I think the other thing is that I think he's helped us to understand that it's the smallest and perhaps sometimes the ugliest animals are just as interesting as the bigger, more glamorous animals. Yeah, we were always interested in lions and tigers and elephants and so on. But he has helped us to get interested in plants.

46:58You know, the series that he did about the life of plants and extraordinary time-lapse photography brought those plants alive in a way that made us appreciate the previously overlooked and underappreciated aspects of wildlife and the living world. So I think he has democratised, if you like, our understanding of the natural world. That was David Hendy in conversation with me, Matt Elton.

47:30David is the author of numerous books, including 2022's The BBC, A People's History, published by Profile. The BBC, A People's History, published by... Well, what's a story here? By Profile. The BBC, A People's History, published by Coldplay The BBC, A People's History, published by The BBC, A thread. The BBC Now The BBC, A People's History

47:52The BBC gear that Lamont The BBC, A People's History The BBC