Sir David Frederick Attenborough (/ˈætənbərə/; born 8 May 1926) is a British broadcaster, biologist, natural historian and author. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, the nine natural history documentary series forming the Life collection, a comprehensive survey of animal and plant life on Earth.
Attenborough was a senior manager at the BBC, having served as controller of BBC Two and director of programming for BBC Television in the 1960s and 1970s. First becoming prominent as host of Zoo Quest in 1954, his filmography as writer, presenter and narrator has spanned eight decades; it includes Natural World, Wildlife on One, the Planet Earth franchise, The Blue Planet and its sequel. He is the only person to have won BAFTA Awards in black and white, colour, high-definition, 3D and 4K resolution. Over his life he has collected dozens of honorary degrees and awards, including 3 Emmy Awards for Outstanding Narration.
While Attenborough's earlier work focused more on the wonders of the natural world, his later work has been more vocal in support of environmental causes. He has advocated for restoring planetary biodiversity, limiting population growth, switching to renewable energy, mitigating climate change, reducing meat consumption, and setting aside more areas for natural preservation.
On his broadcasting and passion for nature, NPR stated he "roamed the globe and shared his discoveries and enthusiasms with his patented semi-whisper way of narrating".[2] He is widely considered a national treasure in the UK, although he himself does not embrace the term.[3][4][5] He is the younger brother of the late director, producer and actor Richard Attenborough,[6] and older brother of the late motor executive John Attenborough.[7]
David Frederick Attenborough was born on 8 May 1926 in Isleworth, Middlesex,[8][9] and grew up in College House on the campus of the University of Leicester, where his father, Frederick, was principal.[10] He is the middle of three sons; his elder brother, Richard (died in 2014), became an actor and director, and his younger brother, John (died in 2012), was an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo.[7] During the Second World War, through a British volunteer network known as the Refugee Children's Movement, his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Germany.[11]
Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones, and natural specimens.[12] He received encouragement when a young Jacquetta Hawkes admired his collection.[13] He spent much time in the grounds of the university. Aged around 11, he heard that the zoology department needed a large supply of newts, which he offered through his father to supply for 3d each. The source, which he did not reveal at the time, was a pond right next to the department.[14] A year later, his adoptive sister Marianne gave him a piece of amber containing prehistoric creatures; some sixty years later, it would be the focus of his programme The Amber Time Machine.[15]
In 1936, Attenborough and his brother Richard attended a lecture by Grey Owl (Archibald Belaney) at De Montfort Hall, Leicester, and were influenced by his advocacy of conservation. According to Richard, David was "bowled over by the man's determination to save the beaver, by his profound knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Canadian wilderness and by his warnings of ecological disaster should the delicate balance between them be destroyed. The idea that mankind was endangering nature by recklessly despoiling and plundering its riches was unheard of at the time, but it is one that has remained part of Dave's own credo to this day."[16] In 1999, Richard directed a biopic of Belaney entitled Grey Owl.[17]
Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester.[18] He won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge in 1945 to study geology and zoology and obtained a degree in natural sciences.[19] In 1947, he was called up for national service in the Royal Navy and spent two years stationed in North Wales and the Firth of Forth.[13] In 1950, Attenborough married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel. The couple had two children, Robert and Susan. Jane died in 1997.[20] Robert is a senior lecturer in bioanthropology for the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra.[21][22] Susan is a former primary school headmistress.[18]
Attenborough had a pacemaker fitted in June 2013 as well as a double knee replacement in 2015.[23] In September 2013, he commented: "If I was earning my money by hewing coal I would be very glad indeed to stop. But I'm not. I'm swanning round the world looking at the most fabulously interesting things. Such good fortune."[24]
After leaving the Navy, Attenborough took a position editing children's science textbooks for a publishing company. He soon became disillusioned with the work and in 1950 applied for a job as a radio talk producer with the BBC.[25] Although he was rejected for this job, his CV later attracted the interest of Mary Adams, head of the Talks (factual broadcasting) department of the BBC's fledgling television service.[26] Attenborough, like most Britons at that time, did not own a television, and he had seen only one programme in his life.[27]
He accepted Adams' offer of a three-month training course. In 1952 he joined the BBC full-time. Initially discouraged from appearing on camera because Adams thought his teeth were too big,[25] he became a producer for the Talks department, which handled all non-fiction broadcasts. His early projects included the quiz show Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? and Song Hunter, a series about folk music presented by Alan Lomax.[25]
Attenborough's association with natural history programmes began when he produced and presented the three-part series Animal Patterns. The studio-bound programme featured animals from London Zoo, with the naturalist Julian Huxley discussing their use of camouflage, aposematism and courtship displays. Through this programme, Attenborough met Jack Lester, the curator of the zoo's reptile house, and they decided to make a series about an animal-collecting expedition. The result was Zoo Quest, first broadcast in 1954, where Attenborough became the presenter at short notice due to Lester being taken ill.[28]
In 1957, the BBC Natural History Unit was formally established in Bristol. Attenborough was asked to join it, but declined, not wishing to move from London where he and his young family were settled. Instead, he formed his own department, the Travel and Exploration Unit,[29] which allowed him to continue to front Zoo Quest as well as produce other documentaries, notably the Travellers' Tales and Adventure series.[29] In the early 1960s, Attenborough resigned from the permanent staff of the BBC to study for a postgraduate degree in social anthropology at the London School of Economics, interweaving his study with further filming.[30] However, he accepted an invitation to return to the BBC as controller of BBC Two before he could finish the degree.[31]
Attenborough became Controller of BBC Two in March 1965, succeeding Michael Peacock.[32] He had a clause inserted in his contract that would allow him to continue making programmes on an occasional basis. Later the same year he filmed elephants in Tanzania, and in 1969 he made a three-part series on the cultural history of the Indonesian island of Bali. For the 1971 film A Blank on the Map, he joined the first Western expedition to a remote highland valley in New Guinea to seek out a lost tribe.[33]
BBC Two was launched in 1964, but had struggled to capture the public's imagination. When Attenborough arrived as controller, he quickly abolished the channel's quirky kangaroo mascot and shook up the schedule. With a mission to make BBC Two's output diverse and different from that offered by other networks, he began to establish a portfolio of programmes that defined the channel's identity for decades to come. Under his tenure, music, the arts, entertainment, archaeology, experimental comedy, travel, drama, sport, business, science and natural history all found a place in the weekly schedules. Often, an eclectic mix was offered within a single evening's viewing. Programmes he commissioned included Man Alive, Call My Bluff, Chronicle, Match of the Day, The Old Grey Whistle Test, Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Money Programme.[34] With the addition of colour television, Attenborough brought snooker to the BBC to show the benefits of the format, as the sport uses coloured balls.[35] The show – Pot Black – was later credited with the boom of the sport into the 1980s.[36]
One of his most significant decisions was to order a 13-part series on the history of Western art, to show off the quality of the new UHF colour television service that BBC Two offered. Broadcast to universal acclaim in 1969, Civilisation set the blueprint for landmark authored documentaries, which were informally known as "sledgehammer" projects.[37][38] Others followed, including Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man (also commissioned by Attenborough), and Alistair Cooke's America. Attenborough thought that the story of evolution would be a natural subject for such a series. He shared his idea with Christopher Parsons, a producer at the Natural History Unit, who came up with a title Life on Earth and returned to Bristol to start planning the series. Attenborough harboured a strong desire to present the series himself, but this would not be possible so long as he remained in a management post.[39]
While in charge of BBC Two, Attenborough turned down Terry Wogan's job application to be a presenter on the channel, stating that there weren't any suitable vacancies. The channel already had an Irish announcer, with Attenborough reflecting in 2016: "To have had two Irishmen presenting on BBC Two would have looked ridiculous. This is no comment whatsoever on Terry Wogan's talents."[40] Attenborough has also acknowledged that he sanctioned the wiping of television output during this period to cut costs, including a series by Alan Bennett, which he later regretted.[41]
In 1969, Attenborough was promoted to director of programmes, making him responsible for the output of both BBC channels.[42] His tasks, which included agreeing budgets, attending board meetings and firing staff, were now far removed from the business of filming programmes. When Attenborough's name was being suggested as a candidate for the position of Director-General of the BBC in 1972, he phoned his brother Richard to confess that he had no appetite for the job. Early the following year, he left his post to return to full-time programme-making, leaving him free to write and present the planned natural history epic.[12]
After his resignation, Attenborough became a freelance broadcaster and started work on his next project, a trip to Indonesia with a crew from the Natural History Unit. It resulted in the 1973 series Eastwards with Attenborough, which was similar in tone to the earlier Zoo Quest; the main difference was the introduction of colour. Attenborough stated that he wanted to work in Asia, because previous nature documentaries had mostly focused on Africa.[43] That year, Attenborough was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on The Language of Animals.[44] After his work on Eastwards with Attenborough, he began to work on the scripts for Life on Earth.[45]
Due to the scale of his ambition, the BBC decided to partner with an American network to secure the necessary funding. While the negotiations were proceeding, he worked on a number of other television projects. He presented a series on tribal art (The Tribal Eye, 1975) and another on the voyages of discovery (The Explorers, 1975).[45] He presented a BBC children's series about cryptozoology entitled Fabulous Animals (1975), which featured mythical creatures such as mermaids and unicorns.[46] Eventually, the BBC signed a co-production deal with Turner Broadcasting and Life on Earth moved into production in 1976.[47]