David Attenborough

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 30:09

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety eight and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:32

My castaway this week is a naturalist and broadcaster. In the early days of television, he could be seen in black and white running around jungles looking for exotic creatures. Today, he's the internationally acclaimed presenter of some of the most lavish and authoritative series about the planet that have ever been made. In between, he also had a successful career as a television executive, serving as both a BBC channel controller and its director of programmes. But he's always preferred to be out in the wild, exploring and explaining. It's the best job in the world, he says. He is, of course, David Attenborough. I can see you now, David, all those years ago on ZooQuest with knobbly knees and baggy Boy Scout trousers rushing around. The surprising thing I now learn is that you were never meant to present these programmes at all.

David Attenborough1:18

Not at all, no.

David Attenborough1:20

In 52, when I joined television, everybody did everything. And I was one of about a dozen people who handled all non-fiction television in the country, and indeed in Western Europe, really, come to that. And we did everything. We did knitting and cooking and archaeology, political programmes and so on.

Presenter1:42

But as a producer.

David Attenborough1:43

Yeah, and tani, oh yeah, so we used to produce about two or three a week, and they were terrible, of course, needless to say. And then I hit on the idea of well, why don't why don't I go to Africa if you can exploit this situation, and persuaded a a good friend from the London Zoo. And together we cook up an expedition where the zoo was going to collect animals and I would go along and film it.

Presenter1:54

Yeah.

David Attenborough2:03

But also it had inserts in which the animals the zoo collected were going to be displayed live in the studio, which was the great thing, because with any luck you were going to bite the presenter or escape or wet down his front or something of that sort. And the first pro after the first programme, the man from the zoo who was doing it, fell very, very ill, seriously ill, and because it was live, somebody had to do it next week. And so the director of the programme said it's you, but make it clear that you're on the staff, so there's no fee.

Presenter2:35

SNF starts note free.

David Attenborough2:35

Sid

David Attenborough2:37

Uh

Presenter2:37

Best tradition of the BBC. But obviously you took to it very easily. There is naturally something of the actor in you and I I think brother Richard had made sure that that was exploited as a boy, hadn't he?

David Attenborough2:47

Yes, I I yeah, I know he would uh corral the rest of us I've got a younger brother too um into appearing in his shows, uh of which he was the impresario, the director, the writer, uh, the finance administrator and general head cook and bottle washer, and and we were sort of spear carriers. But you're quite right, I mean I do recognize perfectly well, uh, as I suppose we both do, that that our job involves a certain amount of thespian skill.

Presenter3:16

And you can either do it or you can't, and as it turned out, you could.

David Attenborough3:18

Done as it

Presenter3:20

And since the beginning, wherever you've gone, you've taken music with you. It's a been a very important part of it all, hasn't it?

David Attenborough3:23

It's a

David Attenborough3:26

Oh, absolutely crucially, yes. Um there was a time w when there was the only portable tape machine.

David Attenborough3:32

was reel to reel, and that was extremely bulky and tiresome. Then I moved on to taking audio cassettes. But the big breakthrough really came with C D's and I always take ninety nine C D s. The great trick, I think, is to come back with about, say, ten percent unheard, because the great fun after all is is not playing it again. The great fun is to get something new. And if you if you're right on the last day on your last disc that's what you've got to listen to.

Presenter4:02

Tell me about your first one for this desert island, the one we're going to send you to.

David Attenborough4:05

Well, uh the one I I always take, I think, always, is is uh Cossi Fatute, and and what I would like to hear uh is the farewell trio in the first act, because to me it summarizes uh saying goodbye, and I spent a lot of time doing that in my life.

Speaker 44:33

Oh free.

Speaker 44:36

God see a hope.

Presenter5:26

Montserrat Caballer as Fiordi Ligi, Janet Baker as Dora Bella, and Richard Van Allen as Don Alfonso, singing suave siavento for Mozart's Cosi fan tute with the orchestra and chorus of the Royal Opera House conducted by Sir Colin Davis. The other accident of fate that launched you, David, was that the BBC turned you down, aged twenty-six, for a job in radio, didn't it?

David Attenborough5:47

Yes, they did. I I was in publishing, putting commas in on a good day, taking them out on a bad day. I mean, really terrible. I saw this advertisement in the Times and applied to that, and they said no.

David Attenborough5:59

But then I think about three weeks later I got a letter saying we're starting this new thing and it's a lot of people don't think much of it, but uh i it's called television and we've seen your application and you are the sort of person we think might help us start it.

Presenter6:14

So you ended up doing it, as you said, at Alexandra Palace, early fifties.

David Attenborough6:17

Yeah.

David Attenborough6:18

Yeah.

Presenter6:18

Were you aware then that people were watching I think after the coronation people started buying sets?

David Attenborough6:22

People started buying sets. Oh, it was it was uh intoxicating. I mean it was really thrilling because there was only one network, it was uh The Monopoly, um so that if anybody watched television, they watched you, they watched B B C television.

David Attenborough6:37

And when you drove back you didn't want to leave because it was, you know, all so exciting. We'd tried this new thing and we'd tried moving the camera and getting him to talk at the same time, you know, that sort of stuff. And we oh gosh, it was exciting And then we'd all get in a bus or in a pal's car and drive back west to our various homes and as you drove you saw this electronic flicker on the curtains of a pipe and you thought they were watching us?

Presenter7:00

But as you say, it was all live, it was very primitive. Things went wrong. I I can remember men in brown coats moving the scenery in vision and

David Attenborough7:02

Things went

David Attenborough7:04

Yeah.

David Attenborough7:06

Oh yes, rather.

Presenter7:08

There's one story I'd love you to tell, and that's the one involving William Glock, who was even then, he must have been about 50 then, I think, very distinguished in the music world.

David Attenborough7:17

And he later became, of course, controller of Radio Three. But at the time, I was summoned by the organiser of the talks department. They said, he said, Do you realise this is Mozart's umpteenth centenary? What would it be of his death, I suppose? Because he was in the fifties. I said, Well, I had it has escaped my notice. And he said, Well, we've had fifty pounds in the budget all year to do celebratory programmes, and nobody's done it, and you better do something. And I said, Well, that's fifty pounds is not a lot. And he said, No, well, well, do your best, dear boy. So we I found this great Mozart scholar, William Glock.

Presenter7:19

Indeed.

David Attenborough7:53

I we went and saw him in I went and saw him in his apartment and he discussed how we were going to do something f fairly profound about the the G minor symphony of the fortieth and

David Attenborough8:03

Its implications to the last act of Don Giovanni. Oh, terrific. The public is absolutely panting for that. And and so he turned.

David Attenborough8:12

And and I, of course, with an overarching imagination, had decided we would start with having a portrait of the on the piano of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and that I would superimpose the title and pull out, and William Glock would then explain about this rising scale in the G manner.

David Attenborough8:30

And so with the it we were all ready, and the studio manager was saying all this, you know, as we were unfamiliar, counting you down at the time. And we started and faded the record of the symphony, and then William Grok left the piano, looked at the camera and said.

David Attenborough8:52

Uh uh

David Attenborough8:54

And shut his eyes.

David Attenborough8:55

So we faded and went back to the potter's wheel.

Presenter8:59

Yeah.

David Attenborough8:59

Just tried. We did it three times. And then we decided that we had had enough of the Potter's Wheel and the Kitten playing with a ball of wool and we'd move on to the next program.

Presenter9:09

It's a great story. Tell me about your second record. Well,

David Attenborough9:13

I I was brought up in Leicester and uh my my father was the principal of the university college there, and just opposite the other side of the park from the university.

David Attenborough9:23

was the best hall then at the time for music in in the Midlands, um the de Montfort Hall. And of course one of the great things was the Leicester Symphony Orchestra, half of it, if not more, amateur, and the local choir um singing in the sar, performing in the south.

David Attenborough9:40

It was the first really major work of which I knew every single note, and it is still a Swan Leichelson, not just my childhood and sound, but it is just um a breathtaking work of Sarah Leichelson.

Presenter10:48

The Academy and Chorus of Saint Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Mariner, performing part of And the Glory of the Lord from Handel's Messiah. So yours, David, was an academic family. Your father was effectively the first principal of Leicester University. Your mother was a teacher, her father was a headmaster.

Presenter11:04

But which parent or who talked to you interestingly about wildlife?

David Attenborough11:09

Oh, neither. Neither of them knew no the but then that was the great trick, you see, uh of education, as far as they were concerned, I think.

David Attenborough11:15

That

David Attenborough11:16

They took the view that the way to get a child interested in something is for the parent to display an interest in that subject, but also a deep ignorance. So that what my father would say is, What an extraordinary thing that is in that rock. I mean, what is it?

David Attenborough11:31

And then you go and find out and you tell them.

Presenter11:33

So you can tell him. And you were fascinated by fossils.

David Attenborough11:34

Did you

David Attenborough11:36

Yes, well well Leicestershire and the eastern part of the county has lovely fossils. I mean really beautiful fossils.

Presenter11:40

We really

Presenter11:41

But why? I mean, what what what prompted that interest?

David Attenborough11:45

Well, I don't think any child would be uninterested in hitting a rock with a hammer and seeing two things fall apart and seeing a gorgeous seashell, I mean, glinting and shining in the sunlight. And someone says to him, Nobody's seen that, you know, for 150 million years. Yours is the very first eye that was set on that. And that creature swam in the sea, you know. There was sea here. Really?

David Attenborough12:08

Are there more? Sure.

Presenter12:09

And lots of scientists came by, because visiting lecturers, I think, I mean, came to your house.

David Attenborough12:15

Yeah.

Presenter12:15

Was there any one of them that inspired you in any way? Were y

David Attenborough12:19

Well, Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, who was the first man who gave the name to vitamins and discovered effectively vitamins, came, and he was accompanied by his daughter, who I thought was the most beautiful creature I'd ever seen in my entire life. I mean, just ravishingly beautiful. And I said to my mother, after being starstruck by that I suppose I was nine or something

David Attenborough12:42

Do you think Miss Hopkins would like to see my museum? And mother said, Well, I should think I'll ask her. And Miss Hopkins said she would, so I suppose

Presenter12:49

How old was Miss Hopkins?

David Attenborough12:50

I suppose Miss Hopkins was about um

David Attenborough12:53

Late twenties, perhaps.

David Attenborough12:55

And so I wrote out new labels, of course, naturally, and raised all these bits of fossils and pebbles and bits of broken glass and stuff.

David Attenborough13:04

And she admired them all, and asked all the right questions, and and I was totally bowled over by this lady.

David Attenborough13:10

And they left. And then, oh, I suppose about two weeks later,

David Attenborough13:14

A parcel arrived, addressed to me.

David Attenborough13:18

You know, well if you're an eighth, there's only you only get parcels when on your birthday and Christmas, don't you? I mean, that's the only time and this was neither. I couldn't believe it. I opened this, and inside there were bits of Anglo-Saxon pottery shards, uh shells from the Pacific, bits of Roman glass, things like that. It was from Miss Hopkins, and that was Joquetta Hawkes.

Presenter13:39

Good heavens.

David Attenborough13:41

who of course later married Crystal Hawkes and then married uh JB Priestley and was a great writer.

David Attenborough13:47

But she was also extremely beautiful.

Presenter13:50

Record number three.

David Attenborough13:52

Record number three. Well, my experience of taking records on these trips is that it's okay to take, you know, a bit of floss every now and again, but by golly, you really do need a bit of gristle. I mean, you really need something to chew on. You really need something you can listen to twenty times and still the stuff there. And Bach of course does that par excellence, and so you wanna I think I'd take a really piece of gristly Bach.

Presenter15:13

Kenneth Gilbert playing part of Bach's Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D minor. So for ten years, David Attenborough, through the fifties and into the early sixties, you made this thing called television. But of course the only way onwards and upwards, as is usually the case, is into administration and management. This is this is the great perversity, isn't it? That if you're really very good at and talented at making programmes you win promotion and have to stop making them.

David Attenborough15:38

Yeah, I think the reason actually is that um in big organizations it is the only way that you command loyalty.

Presenter15:45

Because you've proved you can

David Attenborough15:45

Because people who are down there at the coalface want to think.

Presenter15:46

Big f.

David Attenborough15:50

correctly my view that whoever it is who's determining which way the coal mine's going, uh has some idea of what's involved.

Presenter15:57

I want to come to that later. But tell me about this thing you called a peach of a job, because you were just about to pull away from the BBC because you were going to have to be a manager when suddenly you were offered the controllership of BBC Two, fledgling BBC Two.

David Attenborough16:05

Uh

David Attenborough16:09

Yeah, well B B C T was less than a year old, uh Michael Peacock had started it and Hugh Weldon, who was then just become the controller of programmes, came to me and said, uh would you like to take over this network?

Presenter16:22

But why was it such a peach?

David Attenborough16:24

Because it had an empty schedule. Anybody who takes over an existing controller ship is lumbered with all kinds of the good ideas and bad ideas and conceptions and conventions of his predecessor. And shifting them, as I dare say, the controller of Radio 4 may know, is not easy. But if you've got blank schedules, you think, well, why don't we do something on heraldry? You know, I mean.

David Attenborough16:49

Surely that must be quite interesting.

Presenter16:51

But actually, was it your idea to cover Wimbledon? Because that that was when it began.

David Attenborough16:55

It was my idea to cover yes, to cover it, I think I th well, certainly, I don't can't claim it was my idea, it was certainly my idea to cover snooker because we introduced colour for the first time.

Presenter17:05

People used to watch it in black and white.

David Attenborough17:07

Yes, uh and the commentator used to say, if you're watching this in black and white, uh the r the blue ball is next to the green.

Presenter17:07

And the co

Presenter17:14

But one day cricket was invented for BBC Two wasn't it?

David Attenborough17:17

One day cricket was. Yeah, and uh and floodlit rugby and uh but also lots of other things. I mean, it is an amazing thing now that if you look back at schedules you discover that there were no fifty minute documentaries.

Presenter17:29

So you commission civilization because of color.

David Attenborough17:31

Because of colour.

Presenter17:33

And and they they were one hour, weren't they?

David Attenborough17:35

They were. Yes, they were.

Presenter17:36

Thirteen thirteen

David Attenborough17:37

131 hours. And people said, Oh, the history of painting, they said.

Presenter17:38

Yeah.

David Attenborough17:41

But it was I mean, that was that was done really to to show that color television could be superb. Because at the time, color television was derided all over the world as being gaudy and tinsel and just horrible.

Presenter17:56

But you'd perfected it, hadn't you, on uh with using late-night line-up and I think Joan Bakewell's complexion.

David Attenborough18:02

That is how could you bring a blush to Joan Bakewell's cheeks? was one of the questions, and would you see?

Presenter18:09

Echo.

David Attenborough18:10

Number four.

David Attenborough18:11

Well, while I was on B B C Two, um uh amongst the various things that weren't being covered, for example, was jazz. Jazz was not covered at all. And there were all these great names, you know, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong and

David Attenborough18:25

Count Basie, they they were all around still, but nobody cared, and and so we put them on.

Presenter19:01

Duke Ellington and his orchestra playing Malatoba Spank. Life on Earth, Living Planet, Trials of Life, Life in the Freeze, and Other Life of Birds, and many more. So many successful series over the past twenty years, and some, of course, unforgettable moments of television.

Presenter19:16

Tell me about the flower that blooms only once in a thousand days, and and then only for what, seventy two hours?

David Attenborough19:22

Mm, yeah. Um well, it's called amorphophallus titanum. See, this is before Viagra or anything.

Presenter19:28

Ha

David Attenborough19:32

And it has a huge spathe, like a convolvulus flower, like and it's only deep crimson.

David Attenborough19:41

Which is what I suppose it's about eight feet across, and from the bottom of this, this enormous spike, twelve feet high.

David Attenborough19:49

Um

Presenter19:50

But how do you know when it's gonna die?

David Attenborough19:51

Well you don't, of course. And so we had to organize

David Attenborough19:55

what you might call uh an amorphophallus watch.

David Attenborough19:59

we organize the local people to spread out through the forest and come running. Because they would have to come running because this thing only it goes through a very quick life cycle of emerging, smelling, being fertilized and then collapsing.

Presenter20:17

It is a very complicated business. You've got to get the timing right. A s there's a similar story attached to a particular crab, isn't there, that only comes up the beach

David Attenborough20:22

Yes. Now that's actually quite predictable. The the Christmas Island crab, which suddenly appears from burrows all over the island, and a million crabs, a solid carpet of scarlet carpet of claws and and spikes, just rolls down towards the sea to go down to lay their eggs.

Presenter20:40

Once a year.

David Attenborough20:41

Once a year. And you can predict it because it is the time when the tides are the highest in the middle of the night. You can't do it in a day because we get picked off by gulls. You want to have it at the h of the crest of the tide so that you don't have to walk so far. And the crabs know. And that's what makes it so powerful and

Presenter21:00

It's very romantic, isn't it?

David Attenborough21:01

Uh

Presenter21:01

Uh

David Attenborough21:01

Uh

Presenter21:01

Uh

David Attenborough21:01

Yeah, but very emotional really.

Presenter21:03

And you could film it, despite the fact this happens at night, as you say, in in the dark, because now film is so advanced. A lot of things happen in twilight and half-life, but you can.

David Attenborough21:11

Ah, well, yes, that's one of the exciting things these days of the so called starlight cameras, which are electronic cameras when it it really is so dark that you you can't see your hand in front of your face.

David Attenborough21:21

Which produces an embarrassing situation, you see, because there is the director who's got a video scan, a video monitor, and he can see perfectly well. So can the cameraman. And they say, Go off into the darkness, Dave. And I say, what do you mean? I can't see anything out there. You'll be all right. Do you see that? We can see you. We can see you. I said, maybe a lion out there. No. Absolutely all right.

Speaker 421:38

We can see you

Presenter21:38

Yeah.

Presenter21:44

The technology, though, has made things much, much easier, hasn't it? I mean, you can now attach cameras, I think, to the back of a tame eagle. So you can intercut that with the eagle in the wild, so it's as if we're flying with him. It is artifice, though. Do you worry about that? Does that worry you?

David Attenborough21:53

To the eagle.

David Attenborough21:59

Yes. But if you want to show, let's say, a woodpecker that a woodpecker has a tongue which is about half half as long as its body, which snakes out under its own impetus and goes down the tunnels of the bored by beetle grubs and other things, how are you going to show that? It's a worth while thing to show.

Presenter22:18

What do you do, tame a woodpecker?

David Attenborough22:19

Your time would?

Presenter22:20

Get him to dinner.

David Attenborough22:20

And you get him to feed regularly in a certain place and you provide him with logs which are cut away at the side so you can see it. Now that's a a very complicated thing to do, but it is what the woodpecker does, and there's no better way of showing people that a woodpecker has a long tongue.

Presenter22:36

Record number five.

David Attenborough22:37

Ah. Well, it's my experience that that if you're taking these things away, what you want to have is as wide a variety of musical voices, as it were, talking to you.

David Attenborough22:48

If you've only got eight, then you mustn't have three pieces of Mozart or five pieces of Schubert. You've got to have something of everything. And I would therefore extend the musical conversation back to Monteverdi.

Speaker 423:00

Tefit or Tefino, Tefinal Tefino, Shepiton Pomna, Sefi or Pomna.

David Attenborough23:05

If you

Speaker 423:11

Oh my god, all the days.

David Attenborough23:27

I'm not sure.

Speaker 423:33

I saw

Speaker 423:38

Getting so.

Presenter24:00

Nigel Rogers and Iain Partridge singing one of Montevedi's madrigals Zeffiero Torna.

Presenter24:06

Um I wouldn't be forgiven, David, if I didn't ask you about lying down with gorillas. It's the it's the shot that will be included in every single film profile of you. Your head popping up from beneath what, ten tons of mamma gorilla. Was that ecstasy or naked fear on your face?

David Attenborough24:13

Yeah.

David Attenborough24:17

Who was

David Attenborough24:21

Oh no, total total ecstasy, total ecstasy. Um

David Attenborough24:24

to be accepted by this creature, which was much closer than I thought it was going to be. I mean, I d I didn't expect it to be as close as that. She just sort of emerged out of the uh out of the giant nettles and put a put her hand on top of my head.

David Attenborough24:40

and another hand underneath my chin, and turn my head.

Presenter24:44

And you weren't for a long time.

David Attenborough24:44

And you weren't fine. And looked in my eyes.

David Attenborough24:49

I did think, you know, she could actually take this off, you know it could come right off if she turned a little more.

Presenter24:56

And her children were attracted to the power of the men.

David Attenborough24:57

And then she let me go and and and I was aware I was oh, you know, I think it looked at this huge thing smelling rather nice, rather salty and

David Attenborough25:07

And then I and then I felt this weight on on my feet, and there were these two little things undoing my shoelaces.

David Attenborough25:15

Alder

David Attenborough25:17

I was just ravished. I mean, it was just marvellous.

Presenter25:20

But the awful thing is that a lot of this time the camera wasn't turning.

David Attenborough25:25

Well, yes, that's true. Because because I mean, it's fair play to the director. I mean, it was the thing w I was supposed to be there s explaining something highly technical about the evolution of the hand and how uh in Primates he gave you a grip to use a tool and that was the secret of man's success in civilization. But with a with a a large lady gorilla with a hand on top of your head and it's not the moment to go on about uh the opposable thumb.

Presenter25:50

Oh, I didn't And are you such a nice guy that when you found this out you weren't absolutely furious?

David Attenborough25:55

Um

David Attenborough25:57

I must say I was speechless for just a little bit.

Presenter26:02

But these series take years to make. What that means is that the script must come first. And you you write that and sometimes perhaps don't get to deliver certain pieces of that script for three years.

Speaker 426:12

That's right.

Presenter26:13

It's therefore honed and honed and honed again, is it?

David Attenborough26:18

Yes, and what the sc what the initial script does is to say, well, at least that works. I mean, if we filmed all that, it works. But of course when you come to it, uh, you can't film all that.

Presenter26:24

Gives you a free

Presenter26:27

But your great trick is is obviously, as we all noted, to be very relaxed, to deliver it as if it's just off the cuff. But it is

David Attenborough26:34

No, no, it certainly isn't. No. I mean, because for example, you may have to do a piece right at the beginning, three years ago, a piece in which you turn to the camera and say, but on the other hand, you say um and you won't shoot the first bit of the first hand for another two years. So it has to be uh theatrical. Even though you've aged in between.

Presenter26:48

So it has

Presenter26:50

Even though you've aged in between, record number six.

David Attenborough26:54

Record number six is the Schubert um quintet and C, because when you do get these um bad times, you do occasionally want solace and serenity, and there is absolutely nothing, there is no piece that I ever uh listened to, which so transports you into that kind of condition.

Presenter28:16

Rostropovich and the Emerson String Quartet playing part of the Adagio from Schubert's string quintet in C major. You wouldn't expect me not, David Attenborough, to ask your views about the BBC today. The difficulty, though, I understand for you and other former executives is that, you know, to use the phrase that's been used, you can sound like old generals polishing your medals. But you obviously.

Presenter28:39

Love it and care about it deeply. Do you worry about it?

David Attenborough28:44

Yes, I certainly do. I mean the one thing that you've

David Attenborough28:47

absolutely apparent is that the whole of the broadcasting world has been transformed and that the the sort of things that I was worrying about twenty years ago don't obtain anymore. And with all the m multiplicity of new channels and new networks and so on.

David Attenborough29:02

The B B C has got to change, and uh nobody would deny that.

David Attenborough29:06

Uh one just hopes that in the process of changing it is perfectly clear that what is what is important is programme quality.

David Attenborough29:15

And it is not necessarily doing things the cheapest way or even in the most commercial way, but it is programme quality. And that the BBC should be doing things that nobody else could do, because if they doesn't do that, there is no excuse for the license.

Presenter29:30

I don't think, though, that John Burt would disagree with with any of what you've just said, would he?

David Attenborough29:33

What you just said, would he he certainly wouldn't. I mean, he wouldn't disagree with any of that.

Presenter29:37

Hmm.

David Attenborough29:38

But the question is how do you do it?

Speaker 429:38

Uh

David Attenborough29:40

Certainly from my neck of the woods, I worry very much that there's a continuity of people, so that you have a continuity of expertise and you have a s a strong loyalty to the organisation. But if the consequences of diversifying are that your staff, or a high proportion of your staff, are only there for six months or for a year or for two years and then are pushed out again.

Presenter30:02

What's happening?

David Attenborough30:03

Well, that's what's happening in many quarters of the of the organization, where people just come in, do a job and go away again. And the cherishing of expertise and professional standards and loyalties has vanished.

Presenter30:17

Record number seven.

David Attenborough30:19

Uh well, um you want a great variety not only of composers but of mood. And uh after Serenity of Schubert, occasionally you really feel pretty spiteful about life. And you also uh want to have some modern music, or relatively modern music. And I would take uh Walton's first symphony because the second movement he calls it con malizia with malice. And if I'm really feeling vicious about life I think I'd pay a bit of this.

Presenter31:45

Part of the second movement of Sir William Walton's Symphony No. One, Con Malizia with Malice, played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Andrei Previn.

Presenter31:53

You're quite clearly, um, David, from everything you've talked to us about over the years, a Darwinist. Has being close to the natural world, so close as you've been o over the years, affected your attitude to religion, to God?

David Attenborough32:06

Um, people do sometimes say, um, when you see extraordinary natural beauty, say a hummingbird or a bird of paradise or something.

David Attenborough32:15

Don't you feel that that is a demonstration of a proof of the existence of Almighty?

David Attenborough32:22

Well, if you if you you must not only just think of hummingbirds, you've also got to think of uh a a parasitic worm boring into the eye of a small child living on the banks of an African river, for example. And presumably that worm, too, is is a product of the Almighty.

David Attenborough32:38

So I don't think that the complexity of the natural world, or its beauty, or its savagery, or whether in fact it evolves through Darwinism or not, is necessarily anything to do with the

David Attenborough32:52

religious conviction about a deity.

Presenter32:55

And on your desert island, will will the likes of of the hummingbird and the worm, you know, the dazzling and the humble of the natural world, will they make it bearable, or can no amount of wild life make up for human company?

David Attenborough33:08

Oh, well, I I no, no amount of wildlife can make up for human company, that's absolutely for sure. On the other hand, they could ameliorate your condition, couldn't they?

David Attenborough33:17

The nice thing, of course, about desert islands is that they're visited all the time. You'll be visited by birds, you might well be visited by whales, by dolphins, which would be nice.

Presenter33:28

And I dare say, you know, the the the Boy Scout in you, the kind of khaki shorts and all, would ensure that that that you wouldn't starve. You'd you'd be good at it all, wouldn't you?

David Attenborough33:36

There's quite a lot there's bound to be quite a lot to eat from the sea.

David Attenborough33:41

And with luck you would get a thing like uh the cocoanut crabs. Do you know the cocoanut crabs which are very big actually? I mean they uh may w measure eighteen inches across, though they're quite fearsome animals. But they've got a lot of meat on them. They would be pretty good if you could clonk one of those.

Presenter33:57

Last link.

David Attenborough33:58

Good.

Presenter33:58

Yeah.

David Attenborough33:59

Well, uh there is one record which I always take away with me, and I always take one version of it too. It's a Mahler song. Uh it's sung by Janet Baker.

David Attenborough34:10

I've listened to this particular piece in all kinds of circumstances, uh in the Antarctic and uh in the Sahara, but the most magical time I think was lying on the deck of a boat in the Galapagos at night, um looking at the stars, which it's on the equator, so it's a black velvet sky, and shooting stars going across the sky.

David Attenborough34:32

and over the side of the boat are sea lions cavorting in the crystal water.

David Attenborough34:37

and covered in green phosphorescence, so that these green luminous shapes are moving in the water, and the shooting stars above, and Janet Baker singing

David Attenborough34:48

I am dead to the hurley burney of the world, and repose in a place of quietness. I live alone in my heaven.

David Attenborough34:57

In my loving

David Attenborough34:59

In my song.

Speaker 435:46

And it's lightweight.

Presenter35:54

Dame Janet Baker singing Ichbinder Velt Abhand Kommen, one of Mahler's rooket leader, with the new Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbaroli.

Presenter36:03

If you could only take one of the eight records, David, which one is it?

David Attenborough36:05

I would have to take a shubert as they quintet.

Presenter36:09

What about your book?

David Attenborough36:10

Ah well, I wish to take Shifts and Expedients of Camp Life, Travel and Exploration by Lord and Baines, published in eighteen seventy six. It's nearly a thousand pages long. It's illustrated with fantastic illustrations of everything you could do you might think of with a piece of rope or a bolt of cloth.

Presenter36:28

That's a great practical value, this book.

David Attenborough36:30

Absolutely. Essential. It tells you how to make a canoe with a one-bolt of canvas.

Presenter36:32

Yeah.

Presenter36:36

You just got to find the canvas. What about your luxury?

David Attenborough36:38

Oh, come on, you're allowing me some things

Presenter36:40

Nev cat

David Attenborough36:41

Yeah. A luxury, I think I'll take a guitar.

David Attenborough36:46

I I used to think I'd take a piano, but on the other hand is tuning in all that, so I couldn't do all that.

Presenter36:52

Sir David Attenborough, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 337:02

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co. uk slash radio four.