Sir David Attenborough

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:10

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.

Presenter0:35

My castaway on this seventieth anniversary edition of Desert Island Discs is Sir David Attenborough. He has seen more of the world than any person who has ever lived. The depth of his knowledge and the breadth of his enthusiasm have had a fundamental effect on how we view our planet. From sitting hugger-mugger with the mountain gorillas of Rwanda to describing the fragilities of the flightless Kakapo, the wonders of the world are his stock in trade. His passion can be traced right back to the days when, as a lad, he cycled his bike through the Leicestershire countryside, trawling for fossils. He says he knows no deeper pleasure than the contemplation of the natural world. David Attenborough, you've visited the north and south poles. You've witnessed all of life in between, from the the canopies of the tropical rainforest to giant earthworms in Australia. It must be true, mustn't it? And it's quite a staggering thought that you have seen more of the world than anybody else who has ever lived.

Sir David Attenborough1:31

Yeah.

Sir David Attenborough1:32

Well, I suppose so. But then, on the other hand, it's very salutary to remember that perhaps the greatest naturalist who ever lived

Sir David Attenborough1:40

and had more effect on our thinking than anybody, Charles Darwin.

Sir David Attenborough1:44

Only spent four years travelling, and the rest of the time thinking.

Presenter1:49

Professionally, it was fortunate for you that your career coincided with commercial air travel. That was one of the reasons why you've been able to reach all these points around.

Sir David Attenborough1:54

The reasons.

Presenter1:57

At the globe, but you were certainly

Presenter1:59

In the beginning, seeing an unspoilt planet. I mean, were you conscious that you were treading in places that people had never trod before?

Sir David Attenborough2:08

Oh, yes, very much so. Though in fact, you know, fifty years, sixty years ago, um, the world was was known pretty well. Uh I did manage to do that once every now and again, but but not often.

Presenter2:20

Um, your f first trip on my right was to Sierra Leone. How much travel had you actually done before? What did you have to compare it to?

Sir David Attenborough2:25

Sierra M was the first nineteen fifty four was the first time I had left Europe. And I remember g those days air travel, um, you couldn't fly directly to West Africa. And the first night we landed in Tangier, and I thought, Tangier And we thought we'd go to the Kasbar, you know?

Sir David Attenborough2:44

And that was my first uh experience of Africa traipsing through the Casbah and and and and fair to at that time I don't recall meeting meeting many other Europeans who were traipsing through the Casbah.

Presenter2:56

I did want to ask you it's a slightly awkward subject, but you are one of the very few people people in the world, I mean, now, who is a public figure with really an unimpeachable quality. Do do you get bored of being adored and venerated?

Sir David Attenborough3:08

I'm very peachable if people know how to peach.

Presenter3:12

Are you now? How does one how does one peach David Attenborough?

Sir David Attenborough3:16

Uh

Sir David Attenborough3:17

That would be letting on. Maybe I'll get the

Presenter3:18

Maybe I'll get there by the end of the interview then. It's time for some music then, David Attenborough. Your first piece today, tell me what we're going to hear and why have you chosen it?

Sir David Attenborough3:19

Um

Sir David Attenborough3:25

Well, it's a Paraguayan South American, I'm sure, folk tune called The Bellbird, and it's played on Paraguayan harps. And the song of the bellbird is the song which you hear two a two note song, which drives you mad actually, walking through the forest, hearing this noise.

Sir David Attenborough3:44

coming at you all the time. But they've turned it into something really very happy and exhilarating.

Presenter4:52

That was the bellbird traditional harp music from Paraguay. And indeed it was the theme, Sir David Attenborough, so one of your early series, uh ZooQuest, it was called. Um is music important to you generally when you travel? Do you take music with you?

Presenter5:03

Yeah.

Sir David Attenborough5:04

Ah, yeah, I used to take a lot, yes. I take less now, partly because in the old days traveller involved a lot of sitting around and sitting in tents and um in railway carriages and whatever. These days we're mu very much more streamlined, we and uh I don't have as much time to myself as I did.

Presenter5:23

Let's talk a little bit more than David Attenborough about ZooQuest. It was your first venture out into the natural world, as we know it was Sierra Leone. The purpose was t to actually capture animals, is that right, and bring them back?

Sir David Attenborough5:34

Yes, it was uh we were just going as uh to film the operations of uh a collecting team sent out by the London Zoo. I mean, I had no experience about collecting animals. I I've taken a degree in zoology, it's true, but that doesn't involve uh explaining how you jump on a burr constrictor. And we were just there uh to see how it was done.

Presenter5:52

And as a young zoologist, as you say, that that's what you'd done your degree in and you'd been, you know, sitting reading the textbooks on it, but actually being out there in Sierra Leone, did that change your view of what it was you'd been studying? Did it sort of smack you in the face with its uh vibrancy?

Sir David Attenborough6:06

Oh, yes. I mean seeing the African rainforest fauna for the first time.

Sir David Attenborough6:13

The sheer abundance of it, superabundance of it, the variety of form, the chameleons here, snakes there, wonderful birds there, sun birds. I mean, it's just breathtaking. And of course, added to that was the there was the sort of Boy Scout element of traipsing around in Land Rovers and cutting down trees and camping one another. It was fascinating. And once you got there, you couldn't afford to come back, you know, because it was a great carry-on. So you stayed there for three to four months until you'd finished the series.

Presenter6:43

And did it make you realize how much you didn't know about the natural world?

Sir David Attenborough6:47

Oh, well, I've always known that. I mean, um but but but of course you're right. I mean the the uh infinity of, as it were, phenomena is really daunting and humbling. But I think I knew that really.

Presenter7:00

Yeah.

Sir David Attenborough7:01

Yeah.

Presenter7:01

Um it's the case, I've heard that you are um still one of these people who who tends not to uh retreat to bed with a mug of cocoa after you've done a day's filming. You like to go out and have a, you know, a nice sociable night out.

Sir David Attenborough7:12

Uh

Presenter7:12

The f

Sir David Attenborough7:12

Uh Yeah.

Presenter7:12

Uh

Sir David Attenborough7:13

Oh f

Presenter7:13

Uh Uh

Sir David Attenborough7:13

Oh, well, one of the great pleasures of um of making films in in the wor the sort of films I make is after a day's work of going out and seeing what's happening, having a glass of wine or whatever you l drink round there.

Presenter7:24

There will be nobody, of course, to have a glass of wine with on your island, as you know. I'm going to cast you away today. It's not the first time you've been cast away. And I was looking back to your very first appearance. It was in 1957 with Roy Plumley. And you said then, as just a young slip of a thing, I think you were in your very early 30s, you said that one of your ambitions was you yearned to climb Mount Everest. Have you ever done that?

Sir David Attenborough7:46

Ah.

Sir David Attenborough7:47

So no, no. Oh, yeah, I I won't make it now, I won't make it a base camp now, but but as a teenager and in my early twenties, I thought that was that was the only thing a red blooded Englishman really should do, was to climb Everest.

Presenter8:03

Did you have this view of yourself as sort of something of an adventurer, a traveller, as you say, you know, a red-blooded young Englishman?

Sir David Attenborough8:09

Well, I I don't think I did really, particularly. I don't think I took a view of myself at all. I just wanted to climb Everest. I was a dedicated rock climber in my teens and twenties, and that was the ultimate, you know, that was the thing.

Sir David Attenborough8:24

Let's have some more music.

Presenter8:24

Yeah.

Sir David Attenborough8:25

Uh our second Thesis is what? Dave, what are we gonna hear?

Presenter8:28

Uh

Sir David Attenborough8:28

It's a Part of an impromptu number one in F minor played by Imogen Cooper but by written by Schubert.

Sir David Attenborough8:35

And this is something you can play yourself, is it?

Sir David Attenborough8:37

I can play a bits of it very badly.

Presenter9:36

That was Imogen Cooper playing part of Schubert's Impromptu No. One in F minor. Um I want you to cast your mind back now, way back. I'm I'm thinking way back to nineteen twenty six. You were born in West London. Um you were brought up though in uh Leicestershire. Yes. Your father uh ran the college. He was principal of the college that then went on to become uh Leicester University.

Sir David Attenborough9:50

You've

Presenter9:55

And you said of your mother and father they were a formidable pair.

Sir David Attenborough10:00

They were formidable. My father was formidable, and I'm glad that he was. A word of disapproval from him

Sir David Attenborough10:07

Went home.

Sir David Attenborough10:09

And of course when he uh relaxed more, I mean, of course there'd be great fun and uh we used to try and when we knew we were in hot water, try and make him laugh. But he was a very formidable man. He expected uh a lot from his sons.

Presenter10:23

Uh Is that right your mother was The suffragette.

Sir David Attenborough10:26

Uh I think she was, yes. She didn't jump in front of racehorses. Um she was certainly in the first war worked on the land. They didn't call them land girls at the time, but but she did. And she was a very um powerful figure in the sense that she was the JP. She organised, helped to um bring Basque children over. I remember uh finding her on her hands and knees scrubbing out a a hall in Leicester, a disused country house, in order to make it suitable for the Basque children.

Presenter10:58

And some of these refugees, they they made it home to your house, did they or did they? Points.

Sir David Attenborough11:01

Not the Basque children, but subsequently they organised in Leicester receiving Jewish children from Germany and what happened was that you had to provide them with guarantees about looking after them and so on, and then they would be on their way to relatives in America or somewhere. And a number came through that way, and two of them arrived, in theory going on to New York. And then I think about like a month after they arrived, there was a sinking of a ship which contained a lot of children. And that then was cancelled, and they stayed with us for the rest of the war. So they were, in fact, our sisters.

Presenter11:40

Huh.

Sir David Attenborough11:41

So you were three brothers with with two new sisters. How did that go?

Presenter11:42

Two new sisters.

Sir David Attenborough11:45

Um

Sir David Attenborough11:46

Interestingly.

Sir David Attenborough11:48

Uh my parents said yes, well, you now have two sisters when the declaration of war came, and I was fourteen. And I thought, well, hang on, you know, that's all very well, but you're my parents, I'm not sure that I want particularly want to share my parents with anybody. But they soon sorted that out. Uh, you know, you're lucky, you've got your parents. These two girls haven't got their parents at all, so you better pull yourself together, Attenborough.

Presenter12:11

The

Presenter12:12

And as a fourteen-year-old, did that make any sort of sense, or did you still feel rather mood?

Sir David Attenborough12:12

And

Sir David Attenborough12:16

I think so. And of course we came to like them. I mean, they were uh two very nice girls and I'm sorry to say that both of them are no longer alive, but they both went to uh eventually after the war, after five or six years with us, they went to um America, where they got married and so on. And we were in touch with them for the rest of their lives.

Presenter12:35

Some more music then, why not? What are we going to hear now? What's the third piece to day?

Sir David Attenborough12:39

The third piece today is a bit of handel from The Messiah, and I chose that because at that period that we're talking about, before the war, Leicester had a very good hall, the Montfort Hall, and a very flourishing amateur orchestra. And we used to go every year to The Messiah and most of the concerts in between. And here's one of them.

Speaker 213:03

Go be the glory of the Lord.

Speaker 213:42

Uh

Speaker 213:43

I'll say it for

Speaker 213:47

Uh

Presenter14:07

And the Glory of the Lord from Handel's Messiah, performed by the Academy and Chorus of St. Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Mariner. I said in the introduction that you had spent so much of your life exposing us to the wonders of the world, and I'm wondering where it leaves you, having seen all of these wonders. Do you think it's some great complex cosmic accident, or are you closer to the Lord because of it?

Sir David Attenborough14:32

Um

Sir David Attenborough14:34

I don't think that um an understanding and an acceptance of the four billion long history of life I don't think that that is in any way inconsistent with the belief of a a supreme being.

Sir David Attenborough14:52

But uh I don't think it's um I I'm not

Sir David Attenborough14:56

so confident as to say that I'm an atheist, I would prefer to say I'm an agnostic.

Presenter15:02

And and so there you were as this little boy in your short trousers, sort of grubbing around for for Ammonites that had populated the Jurassic Seas. Did it go that deep, or did you just think they looked jolly good and you knew they were old?

Sir David Attenborough15:14

Oh no, I I no, the romance of it was was uh very vivid.

Sir David Attenborough15:19

The possibility that there is in front of you there is a rock the size of a football, and there's quite a good chance that that will contain a shell.

Sir David Attenborough15:29

Perfect, perfect shell which nobody in the world has ever seen before, and which the light of the sun hasn't shone on for three hundred and fifty million years. You are the first person to see that. That's thrilling.

Presenter15:42

How old were you when when you set up your own little well, it was a sort of museum, wasn't it?

Sir David Attenborough15:47

Well, I've collected things. I mean, kids do collect things. Certainly by the age of ten or twelve. What what was in your little museum?

Sir David Attenborough15:56

There were lots of ammonites and fossils, and bellamnites and various and brachiopods and various things from the Leicestershire Jurassic upper lias. Oh, there were bits of Roman pottery. I had a grass snake skin from a hu from a whopping grass snake, I must say. I remember it was about it was about getting on two and a half feet long, I think. I mean, it was very

Presenter16:16

Your brother Richard was equally enthusiastic about his passion, which was very early on acting. He did force you to join in on occasion.

Sir David Attenborough16:25

Yes, he I mean, Leicester was blessed with a with a very, very good amateur dramatic group.

Sir David Attenborough16:32

And Dick was there all the time, all the time.

Presenter16:35

If Force you into joining him, though. I've seen the photograph of you dressed up as a char lady.

Sir David Attenborough16:40

Oh, well that was one of his yes, he also put on shows. Of course he did, yes. And um and recruited me as a sort of a, you know, spear carrier for the for the dumb parts. Um and we did a sketch together called The Ladies What Come to Oblige. Um I can't remember the words, which is perhaps a mercy.

Presenter16:43

Of course he did, yes.

Presenter16:59

Let's uh let's hear another one of your choices then. Um the fourth of the day. What are we going to hear now?

Presenter17:05

Yeah.

Sir David Attenborough17:05

Well, if I'm on a desert island, the desert islands I know are uh as against the sort of popular myth and so on, um they are actually pretty sterile places. And I would like a reminder of the richness of the natural world, of the rainforests. And one of the nicest to do that would be a a recording of of of the lyre bird, which lives in southern Australia and mimics other birds as well as many other things that it hears.

Speaker 217:48

What

Presenter18:16

A recording of the Lyrebird from your series, The Life of Birds, David Attenborough. Um you said that your father was a formidable figure. I'm I'm wondering if you have a memory of the day that you told him you'd or maybe he told you, indeed, that you had won your open scholarship to Cambridge to study zoology.

Sir David Attenborough18:31

are one of the most um vivid moments of my life. He said to me uh when I was seventeen, If you want to go to university, my son, you had better get a scholarship, because uh I mean, he was a relatively poorly paid academic, and

Sir David Attenborough18:46

If you don't get one, uh not only can I find it very difficult to pay for it, but but you don't deserve to go. That's it.

Sir David Attenborough18:54

And I remember very well it was during the war and we had an allotment.

Sir David Attenborough18:59

One day I was down digging.

Sir David Attenborough19:01

And I saw him come out of the house waving a piece of paper and running down towards me and say, You've got it, you've got it.

Sir David Attenborough19:09

And I remember it with great affection and pleasure.

Presenter19:15

And as a father of two children who have gone on to do very well themselves and and carved out very strong careers, um did you expect the same from your children? Did you you know, it's interesting that you said you you think it's a good thing to be a formidable parent, to have expectations and to to raise the bar pretty high. Is that the way you parented?

Sir David Attenborough19:35

I don't know that I did actually. Um being formidable is not one of the things I do easily, I think.

Sir David Attenborough19:43

But um I did my best.

Presenter19:45

And one of the strokes of luck in your life I said, you know, one of them was the commercial air travel and that your career in coincided with the boom in that. Maybe the other great stroke of luck wi was meeting Jane, your wife, who you've said you you really literally could not have done it without. She was there.

Sir David Attenborough20:00

No, well she we we met when we were both at at university.

Sir David Attenborough20:04

If you go away for three or four months of the year, you can't just abandon children. So she looked after the children and devoted her life to doing that.

Presenter20:12

Yes, I was thinking she was untypically accommodating. I mean, you used to just not bring back.

Sir David Attenborough20:15

Yeah.

Presenter20:17

film to make television programmes. He brought back sort of live specimens and

Sir David Attenborough20:19

And he broke.

Sir David Attenborough20:21

Yes, well, she uh turned out to be a brilliant carer for animals.

Sir David Attenborough20:25

particularly mammals, and particularly primates. I mean, we had little bush babies, you know, charming little primitive primates. And we had a whole room in which they lived and bred, and we had twelve berths, something of that order anyway, and watching them breed and so on was beautiful.

Presenter20:41

How how do they mark their territory, I'm wondering?

Sir David Attenborough20:44

You know perfectly well that what they do is pee on their hands.

Sir David Attenborough20:48

And go around plonking their urine all over the place. So that's why they have to have a house of their own. But she really looked after, and her skills were recognised by the London Zoo. And one day they rang up and said, We've got a baby Gibbon imported illegally and it was dying of chronic indigestion and diarrhea and one thing and another, and what it really needs is tender, loving care. Could you take it? And Jane brought this little creature in and just simply wanted to hang on to her. And she made a sort of sling for it. So she lived permanently on her, really, and used to talk to her. I mean, and of course, talking in Gibbon language is a sort of eructation.

Sir David Attenborough21:30

And in the end she u used to answer the phone and and talk, and then Sammy would lean over and go and she never knew whether to say, I beg your pardon, or I've got a gibbon on my shoulder, which was

Sir David Attenborough21:43

Sally looked boastful.

Presenter21:47

Oh, wonderful. Let's take a break with that image firmly implanted in our heads, Sir David Attenborough. Let's take a break for some more music. What are we going to hear now?

Sir David Attenborough21:56

Well, I would like um a bit of music that really had some complexity to it, if I can hover it lots and lots and lots of times. And I would like to take the whole of the Goldberg variations, if that's possible, but if not, I'll settle for the third by Bach.

Presenter23:08

That was Murray Pariah playing the third of Bach's Goldberg variations. One of your journeys, uh, it was way back, it was in New Guinea, you opened your eyes one morning and it wasn't actually a tent, it was sort of tarpaulin you were sleeping under. You opened your eyes not to the canopies of the forest or even to the clear blue skies, but seven other pairs of eyes looking down upon you. Can you tell me a bit about that? What happened?

Sir David Attenborough23:18

And you were sleeping under

Sir David Attenborough23:25

I's looking down upon you.

Sir David Attenborough23:28

We were with the patrol crossing one of the last patches of really unexplored territory in central New Guinea. It was thought that there was a a tribe of people living in the middle of this. From aerial photographs they'd seen little pinpricks of clearings and there must be people. So we walked across this great patch of forest and I woke up, as you say, and saw these extraordinary people, feathers through their nostrils, in fact quills in their nostrils and huge headdresses.

Sir David Attenborough23:58

And they were just staring at me.

Sir David Attenborough24:00

And I I was sort of trying to find out whether we got any common words.

Sir David Attenborough24:04

But of course you don't need words. Well well you do need them, but but you it's not necessary to have words to show that you are amiably inclined.

Presenter24:12

You've written very interestingly th on the importance or not of eyebrows, and you've done your own little experiments on that. Did you use your eyebrows to communicate with lens?

Sir David Attenborough24:16

Yeah.

Sir David Attenborough24:19

Yes, that well, yes. I mean, um an eyebrow lift. If you go into a crowded room and you see someone you know across the other side and there's so much talk going on you can't communicate, but if you catch their eye, you just l lift the eyebrow and that says, Here I am, I know you, you know me, you know me, how are you? I'll try and catch up with you, you know.

Sir David Attenborough24:40

And I I once thought I would test this to see whether it was actually transcended race. And I was in Fiji and I said to the camera, I will see if I can communicate to people coming into the market.

Sir David Attenborough24:55

and I would catch the eye of someone and raise my eyebrows. Well, we did have Asiatic Indians and uh Fijians and Europeans and people from West Africa and so on, so they hold on. But after a bit I'd come to realize it and get myself into very severe trouble and be carted off by the police. So we had to

Presenter25:13

Back that in. It's important to just reinforce, actually, that as long as you were making these programmes that were getting great viewing figures and were in their own way pioneering, you were also making your way up the slippery pole of the television executives' ladder. You were appointed to run BBC Two, and that was something that you did, I think by anyone's estimation, fantastically well. You commissioned the great landmark series Civilization, The Ascent of Man, Monty Python, Beyond the Fringe. You were clearly very good at it. Were you never tempted to think

Presenter25:45

I've done my travelling. I've seen more of the world than most people could shake a stick at. Actually, I'm going to stick with this because the word was that you were going to be offered the job of DG.

Sir David Attenborough25:53

Well, I um I thought devising programmes and helping people to devise programmes and nourishing and cherishing sh shoots, as it were, was great fun. But then I became promoted and became responsible for, theoretically, for the whole of uh television output. And I I spent all my I mean, sacking people and uh, you know, it's not my game really. And um I decided to go back.

Sir David Attenborough26:19

to making programmes.

Presenter26:20

Let's have a another piece of music then. What are we gonna hear next?

Sir David Attenborough26:23

Well, I I would like a reminder on my desert island that uh Western Europe is not the only uh home of civilization. And uh I've spent quite a lot of time in Southeast Asia. I love Southeast Asia. I think the people are ravishingly beautiful and lovely and gentle and kind and they make beautiful music and they have lovely music and here's some from Bali.

Presenter27:44

Legon, traditional Balinese dance music played on The Gamelan. Um Life on Earth was the series that um it changed everything. It changed the way we watched television, it changed what we watched on television. It was nineteen seventy nine, it was broadcast, I think. Can we talk about that iconic moment? It's the moment, of course, when you well, you actually did exchange glances with a gorilla in Rwanda.

Sir David Attenborough28:05

And it is Rwanda.

Presenter28:06

How much of your mind was occupied by fear and how much by fascination?

Sir David Attenborough28:11

Odd oddly, n no fear at all. And that's not be I mean, you might think it was silly. But but I knew perfectly well that we were not in an aggressive situation. The first one who physical contact was with a female with her twins, and she she put her hand on the top of my head and turned my head towards her to look in one another's eyes. And then she stuck her finger, which was huge, I mean like a great sort of articulated banana, and opened my mouth, put it in my mouth, lowered my jaw and looked inside my mouth.

Sir David Attenborough28:50

So it was it was extraordinary.

Sir David Attenborough28:52

But as as that happened, you knew perfectly well that she was amiably inclined.

Presenter28:58

And what do you say? I mean, you know, the sort of banana shaped finger in the sized finger in the mouse. What was she sizing you up as a potential mate? What was she doing?

Sir David Attenborough29:01

Good

Sir David Attenborough29:05

I've no idea. I've no idea. I'm just reporting it as I wrote it in my diary. The encounter I had with the gorillas was seemed to go on forever. And it was just, I was kind of in paradise. I mean, I lost all sense of time. And when I eventually sort of emerged and went back, I said to the team, I said, God, isn't that extraordinary? And the producer, poor chap, said, Yeah, I think we've got a few seconds of it. I said, A few seconds. I've been there for. I've been there ten minutes. And he said, Yes, but I was waiting for you to say about the zoological point, which is why we were supposed to be there. And if I'd started on doing this other stuff, I didn't know when you were going to start doing your serious bit. And it wasn't until the cameraman said, Look, we should be taking some stuff of this day rolling around these gorillas to make, if only to make the people in the editing room laugh. So they took a bit.

Presenter30:00

You said it was like being in paradise, those moments that you spent there. W did it change you? Did it change?

Sir David Attenborough30:02

He spent

Sir David Attenborough30:06

Your view of the world? Did it mean that I had a more sort of um general view of the unity of life, is perhaps what you're thinking?

Presenter30:13

Yeah, but that probably, if I'd been good enough, that's the phrase I would have come up with, yes.

Presenter30:18

I think I

Sir David Attenborough30:19

I knew that. I mean, I I think I knew that before that. I mean, I think I knew that we are all part of of the same thing.

Presenter30:26

Let's have some music, Deggadaton. What are we going to hear now? We're on uh your seventh disc, I'm afraid.

Sir David Attenborough30:30

Well, I think after m Bach and one thing or another, I you do need a bit of sort of sheer unthinking high spirits. And I'm tempted to get a bit of Strauss, but let's have something that's uh less well known as Strauss. Let's have a bit from Zera.

Presenter31:49

Karl Schira's Wiener Booger Waltz performed by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by John Elliott Gardner. Would you be waltzing to that on the morning?

Sir David Attenborough31:56

Uh

Presenter31:56

Are you a dancer, David? I think I'm so.

Sir David Attenborough31:56

You a dancer, David Hammer.

Presenter31:58

Yeah.

Sir David Attenborough31:58

Yeah, I probably would, actually, if I was high spirited enough.

Presenter32:01

Um your most recent series, then, Frozen Planet, watched in its millions by people, suffered uh

Presenter32:08

Criticism last month.

Presenter32:10

The criticism was about news that uh one particular scene to do with uh a female polar bear had been filmed in captivity and that when people were watching this at home it wasn't clear to them that that had happened. Do you think any of that criticism was fair?

Sir David Attenborough32:24

Um

Presenter32:24

Uh

Sir David Attenborough32:26

Well, in the first place it it it's a crucial scene, it's a crucial happening. And if you want to understand what life is like around there, and particularly the life of Polar Bear, the fact that the the young are born at that time is is very important. So we desperately wanted to have it in.

Sir David Attenborough32:42

Secondly, if you were to find the den in the middle of winter in which a polar bear had just given birth, and you were silly enough to go in there, either the the cub would be killed by the by the mother, or uh the mother would try and kill you, or you would have to kill the mother. I mean lunacy.

Sir David Attenborough33:03

Now if you're making a film, I hope viewers think that what you're trying to do is to give a really impression full, detailed impression of what life is like. Uh we don't make a secret didn't make a secret of it because that's how the press discovered because we told them that that's what has

Presenter33:20

It was on the website, wasn't it? It was on the website. The difficulty being, of course, it's called documentary filmmaking. And of course, the the people who criticized you said, well, that's not strictly documentary. Yes, you know, you're you're straying off into areas of

Sir David Attenborough33:20

It was on the website, wasn't it?

Presenter33:31

Of creating a set of circumstances and confecting something, and so on and so on.

Sir David Attenborough33:35

That's a very simplified view of what filmmaking is about. I mean, uh filmmaking is a very artificial business. You you you deal with time, you condense time, you condense places, you mix close-ups and long shots, mix them all together. You don't say this is a news report, and you shouldn't sort of hang yourself with the notion that documentary has overtones which it which it doesn't deserve. So although it's a bit highfalutin to say that it's art, but that's actually what you do. What would you like your legacy to be?

Sir David Attenborough34:05

Oh, I think the films which uh as long as it's clear that I'm only part of the author, as it were, I mean, uh the films that I and my friends have made over the last sixty years are some kind of record, uh, even if there were scenes that were shot in a zoo. I mean, uh you nonetheless that is what the natural world was like in the twentieth century.

Presenter34:27

You're eighty five now, that's right, eighty six in May of this year.

Sir David Attenborough34:29

May of this year.

Presenter34:31

You recently visited the North Pole, but it d is it a sadness to you that your days of sort of I mean, there are wonderful photographs of and indeed film, of course, of youth.

Presenter34:40

Not quite flying through the canopies of the rainforest, but certainly descending through them. Is it a matter of regret for you that those days are behind you?

Sir David Attenborough34:46

No, it's a matter of gratitude that I managed to do it in the first place. I'm not nimble, to put it mildly. I mean, my knees are hopeless. And I think your your pleasures become modified according to your abilities.

Presenter35:01

And what about the role of work now in your life? You spoke very tenderly about Jane, to whom you were married for forty seven years, and you've written that she died fourteen years ago, and you've written that the focus of my life, the anchor, had gone. Is work the thing now that helps to be your anchor you?

Sir David Attenborough35:16

Yes, I really. I'm very it's very lucky that I'm able to go on working. I hope I've not s slowed down. I don't think I have, actually. I mean, I'm never short of something to do. And for this I'm very grateful. I mean, you know, quite a lot of people at my age certainly are liable to be sitting in a chair and say, what do I do with the next hour? And I've, at the moment, have got more than I can properly deal with. Let's have your final piece of music then, David Attenborough. What are we going to hear?

Sir David Attenborough35:44

Well, um

Sir David Attenborough35:47

My life has been full of farewells really. I mean when you travel and you're going away for three months, that's a farewell for a bit. And the loveliest farewell in music that I know is the farewell from the first act of Cosifantute by Mozart, Suave Silvento, Softly Blow the Wind.

Speaker 336:20

Oh free.

Speaker 336:23

God's the world.

Presenter37:13

Montserrat Gabalier, Janet Baker, and Richard Van Allen singing Suave si Ulvento, Gentle be the Breeze, from the first act of Mozart's Cosi Fantuti, with the orchestra of the Royal Opera House, conducted by Sir Colin Davis. And so, David, it's time for me to give you the books. You get the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. What would you like to take with them?

Sir David Attenborough37:33

Well, there is a book published in eighteen seventy one.

Sir David Attenborough37:39

called Shifts and Expedients of Camplife and Travel.

Sir David Attenborough37:45

and it's about four inches thick, and every conceivable disaster that you can think of that might happen to a traveller is there together with the solution.

Sir David Attenborough37:55

I mean and good advice. I mean, it says things like An unmanly fear of fever is inclined to bring on the symptoms. Good stuff, you see. Indeed. But it also tells you how to use its own to use the phrase how to baffle an alligator.

Presenter38:13

I'm not sure you need a luxury along with this book, but I'm going to allow you one anyway. What would your luxury be?

Sir David Attenborough38:17

Well Joe, I don't know whether you would like, but I'd love a piano. I absolutely have that. I could have a piano?

Presenter38:20

Uh

Sir David Attenborough38:23

'Cause you could turn it into a boat. I don't think I would actually. I don't think I'd bother. But I mean, it'd be nice to have a piano.

Presenter38:27

Right, we'll give you a piano. And if you had to choose just one of the eight discs to save from the waves, which one would you save?

Sir David Attenborough38:34

It would uh if you're going to play it over and over again, just the one disc, uh you would have to have uh the Goldberg variations, provided you're allowed the complete deal, you know, the the whole lot.

Presenter38:45

How could I refuse Sir David Attenborough that? I simply can't. I'll make an exception in this one case for you. Thank you very much. Sir David Attenborough, thank you for celebrating our seventieth birthday with us, and thank you for sharing your desert island discs.

Sir David Attenborough38:46

I simply can't.

Sir David Attenborough38:57

Thank you.

Presenter39:34

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio Four website: bbc.co. uk slash radio four.