Ninety-eight-year-old David Attenborough is the world’s most famous broadcaster. Since the 1950s, the English writer and naturalist has been informing and educating first Britain, and then the world about life on Earth. He has made more than one hundred documentaries, writing and presenting them in his own unique, award-winning style. Attenborough has also spent decades warning about damage to the environment and the catastrophic consequences of climate change.
presenter by accident
Attenborough was obsessed with nature from childhood, and later studied natural sciences at Cambridge University. He entered the media world as a BBC trainee in 1952. He was initially rejected as a presenter, as his boss thought his teeth were too big. In 1954, he and reptile curator Jack Lester created the highly popular TV series Zoo Quest, featuring animals from around the world. Lester was to present it but fell ill before the first programme, so Attenborough stepped in.
A Change of Career
In the 1960s, however, his life took a new turn. He became controller and director of programmes of the new TV channel BBC Two. He quickly defined its content for decades to come, highlighting music, arts, drama and comedy. He introduced Monty Python’s Flying Circus to the world and greenlighted now-iconic cultural series such as The Ascent of Man and Civilisation.
Global Fame
In the 1970s, Attenborough returned to programme-making. In 1979 he made the nature series Life on Earth, which explored the evolution of nature. The groundbreaking series, with highly innovative camerawork, was watched by around five hundred million people worldwide. It made the presenter an iconic figure in British cultural life. His encounter with gorillas in Rwanda is one of British TV’s most moving, magical moments and is a perfect example of his presenting genius and deep empathy with animals.
Educating the World
In the four decades since Life on Earth, Attenborough has written and presented dozens of programmes on all aspects of natural life. His documentaries are celebrations of nature and have given humankind incredible insights into the lives of the creatures that share our world. Our understanding of our planet is immensely richer thanks to his life and work.
Champion of the Earth
Attenborough is, not surprisingly, deeply worried about the menaces of climate change and man’s destruction of the environment. In the last twenty-five years he has made numerous programmes warning of the bleak future that awaits us. In 2022 the United Nations’ Environment Programme recognised Attenborough.
Attenborough’s AnimalsMore than forty animal and plant species have now been named after the naturalist. Examples include one of the world’s largest carnivorous plants, Nepenthes attenboroughii, the black-eyed satyr butterfly, Euptychia attenboroughi, the Micridium attenboroughi beetle, and the Caribbean smiley-faced spider, Spintharus davidattenboroughi. His fame even extends into the fossil world: the discoverers of the earliest-known animal predator named the 560-million-year-old creature Auroralumina attenboroughii. |
