David Attenborough

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy nine, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:31

Our castaway this week is the television naturalist and zoologist David Attenborough. David, there's no secret that you're a musical sort of chap because you've appeared on Face the Music. What instruments do you play? Well, I play the piano. I've

David Attenborough0:43

Play only a few pieces, but very, very badly.

Presenter0:46

Yeah.

David Attenborough0:46

But

Presenter0:46

Yeah. You also play the guitar, I'm told.

David Attenborough0:49

Oh, yes, even worse. But uh I I get a lot of pleasure out of playing a piano actually. Have you?

Presenter0:54

Uh Yeah.

David Attenborough0:54

Uh

Presenter0:54

Red But

David Attenborough0:55

Public?

David Attenborough0:56

Uh not knowingly.

David Attenborough1:00

What's the first one you've chosen, the first disc?

David Attenborough1:02

Well, the first disc I've chosen is a piece of handle. I actually feel that I know something about this problem of taking eight discs away for a desert island. I don't take eight discs. I regularly take, though, forty hours because I I have a... 40 hours on disc? No, on cassette. But I have a small briefcase. Well, a reasonable size briefcase and it carries a cassette player and 40 hours of cassette music and headphones. Stereo headphones.

David Attenborough1:32

And I've been doing this for about uh ten years, so I now know what pieces actually last and what pieces you really need on a desert island, and I reckon

David Attenborough1:41

One of them, when you really feel low, is this piece of handle.

David Attenborough1:45

It comes from one of the Shandos anthems, of course, The Lord is My Light, and it's about dancing with joy.

Speaker 22:03

The Lord is my strength and my stealing.

Speaker 22:10

The Lord is my strength, He is my strength and my shield. The Lord is my strength, He is my strength and my shield.

Speaker 12:17

Lord is my strength, is my strength and my

Speaker 22:22

My heart has trusted in him, my heart has trusted in him. And I am heard. It's I am heard.

Presenter2:51

The Handel Shandus anthem, The Lord is My Light, Iain Partridge was the soloist, and The Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields was conducted by Neville Mariner.

David Attenborough3:00

Mountain

Presenter3:02

Where was your birthplace, David?

David Attenborough3:03

I was born in Isleworth, but um I moved to Leicester, or I was taken to Leicester when my father went to become principal of the University College there.

Presenter3:14

Yeah.

David Attenborough3:14

Yeah.

Presenter3:14

There were three

David Attenborough3:14

Uh

Presenter3:14

He summes Technical

David Attenborough3:15

Yeah. Yes, uh I have an elder brother who is an actor and a younger brother who is in uh the motor car business.

Presenter3:21

And you went up to Cambridge to read what?

David Attenborough3:21

Yeah.

Presenter3:24

To read zoology and geology. You then had to put in national service. Where did you serve and and in what?

David Attenborough3:29

Well, I applied to go abroad. I thought it'd be very nice to go abroad, so they sent me to the Firth of Forth and put me on an aircraft carrier, swinging from the boy in the middle, where I swung for a year or so, which is about as broad as you can get.

Presenter3:40

And then

David Attenborough3:43

Uh well then I came out of the uh out of the navy um to do what

Presenter3:46

To do what?

David Attenborough3:47

to do publishing. I was in publishing for

David Attenborough3:49

I think about eighteen months, but it uh pulled after a bit because it took

Presenter3:53

Is it okay?

David Attenborough3:53

So long.

Presenter3:54

We're using your knowledge of natural sciences in in in publishing?

David Attenborough3:57

Well, inasmuch as taking out commas and books about tadpoles for six-year-olds is using zoological knowledge Yes.

Presenter4:04

Yes. So towards what did you veer?

David Attenborough4:07

Well, towards what I veered was an advertisement in the paper which said that the BBC was looking for a talks producer, which I duly applied for and didn't get. And then I had a letter from the television service of the BBC saying would I like to join television?

Presenter4:13

Try beautiful.

David Attenborough4:21

And um

David Attenborough4:23

I had never seen television in my life, but on the other hand it seemed quite interesting, so I um applied for that.

Presenter4:29

Another record now. What's the second one?

David Attenborough4:31

Well, when we were um boys my mother played the piano a lot, and my father's it was was also extremely musical. And I learnt the piano and eventually was good enough to play Beethoven's symphonies as duets with my mother. When I said I had sounds as I played the lot, I in fact actually played only the slow movement from the second symphony. But nonetheless I played it with great feeling and I would like to hear that.

Speaker 14:52

From the second symphony

Presenter5:58

The beginning of the second movement of Beethoven's Second Symphony, once again the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, directed by Neville Mariner.

Presenter6:06

So to the B B C. What happened? They gave you a a general production course first, did they?

David Attenborough6:11

Yes, though in nineteen fifty-two, when this was, television was only just starting, it was very small.

David Attenborough6:18

And we use cameras which I'm I believe are now in the Science Museum. They were the first cameras ever to produce uh pictures for the a general television service in the world.

Presenter6:28

In the world.

David Attenborough6:28

Yeah.

David Attenborough6:29

Uh so we had a very good time.

Presenter6:31

Had you at the back of your mind a a proposition, um planning to sell the B B C programmes about natural history?

David Attenborough6:38

No, not at all. It never seemed to me feasible that the BBC would ever have the money to send anybody abroad and make films. In nineteen fifty two, um live television was what the BBC did. Of course. And only very few people were allowed the luxury of going abroad with with cameras. And then there were thirty five millimetre cameras.

Speaker 16:49

Yeah.

David Attenborough6:55

But I eventually hit on this idea of going abroad to make films in Africa. What were you doing before that?

Presenter7:01

What we

David Attenborough7:03

Oh, everything. Religious broadcasts, uh uh political broadcasts, uh ballet programmes, archaeology programmes.

Presenter7:11

Teach yourself this and that.

David Attenborough7:12

Yeah, we are gardening club, I see.

Presenter7:14

It's general purpose.

Presenter7:16

Right, so you went to Africa at the B B C's expense. Um this was Zoo Quest, was it? That was yes. What were your terms of reference?

David Attenborough7:25

Well, one of the most popular programmes at the time was was showing animals, live animals, on live television, and it was terrifically popular because the animals always bit people or or wet down people's fronts or escaped and jumped onto the microphone, boom, that sort of thing, which was tremendous. Um so that was very exciting. However, I did feel that it

David Attenborough7:44

It actually didn't show enough of the animal because it always looked as though it was a freak sitting in the studio on a doormat. So I thought it'd be nicer if we could actually show the animal abroad in its proper circumstances in the African bush or whatever. And then there would be a little sequence in which it was caught for the London Zoo. And then you would dissolve through and there was the animal live in the studio. And that was more or less the brief.

David Attenborough8:09

How many programmes?

David Attenborough8:10

Well, we did one series in West Africa which was six programmes and then um they proved to be a success, so I reckoned you didn't let the iron cool at all. You had to immediately slap in another idea that you had to go away to South America, which ideally did and

David Attenborough8:25

I found myself going away, I think, about four months afterwards again. And then we did it more or less ev once a year for ten years.

Presenter8:32

Your third record.

David Attenborough8:34

Well, the third record would be a really piece of dazzling piano playing. I said I played the piano, and I play the slow, simple bits out of a lot of pieces. And one of the bits that I like very much is the Bussoni transcription of the Bach Shacon. And I suppose I would like to hear it played by Michelangeli, who I've heard play it in the concert hall.

David Attenborough8:59

uh and particularly those last final pages which start uh with something fairly simple that I can play, but then you turn over and it gets very nasty indeed.

Presenter10:04

Michelangeli paying the Bussoni transcription of the Bach Chacon.

Presenter10:10

What territories did you cover on on ZooQuest?

David Attenborough10:13

Well, we w uh started in West Africa, then we went to Guyana, as it now is, then we went to Indonesia to look for a large lizard called um popularly the Komodo dragon.

Presenter10:23

Ah, the dragon, yes, this caused a great sensation.

David Attenborough10:26

Yes, uh it did. Much to my surprise. It is quite a dramatic thing. Um it's very long. I mean it's getting off getting off for ten feet long. Yes. And it's was it difficult to track on it?

Presenter10:36

Was it diff

David Attenborough10:38

Uh no, not really. Um one the difficulty was actually getting to the island. Um because it only lives on two two small or two and a half small islands in in eastern Indonesia, and at that time there was no way of getting there, acknowledged way. We ev we eventually got there by sailing on a little prow, a little sailing ship that was run by a gunrunner, as we subsequently discovered.

David Attenborough11:00

But that got us there. These days you can fly there.

Presenter11:03

You asked for a partial release from the BBC so that you could take an anthropology course.

David Attenborough11:08

Yes, I did.

Presenter11:09

You won't

David Attenborough11:09

I became more and more interested in the the reason why different people lived in different ways. Uh and so I wanted to know a bit more about anthropology and decided that the thing to do would be to to to try and do a postgraduate degree in that.

Presenter11:22

Yes. During the ZooQuest days we were doing other television programs.

David Attenborough11:26

Oh yes. I did some programmes which thrilled me to the marrow with a great authority on folk song called Anna Nomax and we put on folk singers from all over Britain. This was back in the mid fifties and people were thought it was awful. I mean angry colonels rang up and said that they knew the BBC was short of money but surely they could get someone professional to singer rather than these people without any teeth who are mumbling away.

Presenter11:35

Oh yeah.

Presenter11:52

Lumpy

David Attenborough11:53

Right, another record, number four.

David Attenborough11:56

Well, those years were uh years of going away on trips very frequently, um and partly for that reason, but partly because it's some of the most sublime music ever, uh I'd like to hear the loveliest song of farewell that I know, which comes from the first act of Cossi van Tutte by Mozart, Suave si el vento.

Speaker 212:25

Score.

Speaker 212:37

I'll see you at home.

Speaker 213:09

Christians.

Presenter13:17

The trio Suave Sio El Bento from the first act of Cosifantute, sung by Montserrat Gaballe, Janet Baker, and Richard Van Allen.

Presenter13:27

Well, no, David, there you were, going up the Zambezi and studying anthropology and doing no harm to anyone. And the B B C top Prask came to you with a rather unexpected proposition.

David Attenborough13:38

Yes, I was asked whether I would take over B B C Two as controller. This was what, sixty five?

David Attenborough13:45

About that, I suppose. It's a a marvellous sensation to be told, look, there is a network with no particular policy, programme, policy, and here are a few million pounds. Uh surely you ought to be able to think of a few programmes sort of line.

David Attenborough13:58

And it's a freedom which doesn't occur in the history of of uh broadcasting very often. Because if you take over a network that exists, it exists uh not simply as a wave band, it exists because it's got a whole host of programmes.

Presenter14:04

Because if

Presenter14:13

Let's get this.

David Attenborough14:13

With producers and staff and expectations and audience and so on. So your freedom of action is very small. But if you start a new network, it wasn't quite new because it was 11 months old when I took it over and Michael Peacock had been running it till then, but nonetheless it was fairly still fluid and one was able to invent all sorts of things or make suggestions to producers who then actually turned them into real things.

Presenter14:36

Then you are apt to be director of programmes. That's the number two man in the hierarchy.

David Attenborough14:41

Yeah.

Presenter14:41

You enjoyed it on the hoe while you were doing it.

David Attenborough14:43

I enjoyed B B C Two enormously. Um I enjoyed the other job less, which was dealing mostly with management methods and computers and um

Presenter14:53

A tremendous amount of memo reading and writing inevitably meetings every day.

David Attenborough14:53

It's a tremendous amount of

David Attenborough14:56

Oh, terrific!

David Attenborough14:58

Yes, yes, yes. Oh yes, so I think I think when I moved into the office there was something like twenty two routine meetings a week.

Presenter15:06

Good heavens. Right, well welcome back to Programmes. What what's your fifth disc?

David Attenborough15:12

Well, um one of the first things I decided when I was at BBC Two was that BBC Two would give a new policy to television music.

David Attenborough15:20

And that whenever there was a really great musical event in London, BBC Two would be there. That was the thought.

David Attenborough15:26

And uh while this was still bubbling in my mind, I heard that Stravinsky was going to come to London to conduct a concert, and it was clear that it was going to be his last.

David Attenborough15:35

concert in London, last appearance. So I thought B B C Two must be there. Well, we had a tremendous hassle in getting the permission to do it and everybody said that nobody would agree because of the lights and the problem one thing or another, but it was eventually agreed.

David Attenborough15:48

And I went to the festival hall feeling actually as though I had really owned the whole place, and I sat there in the free seats that had been given as part of the deal and

David Attenborough16:02

I didn't actually take offence that people didn't actually kiss my feet at the time, because I thought perhaps they didn't really realise that it was all due to me. And so the lights went down, and the first half was conducted by Robert Kraft, and it was some extremely spare Chavinsky of just a few sort of wood blocks and a solo violin and so on. And in the middle of this, in the hushed it was a premiere of a piece, in the hush that in the festival hall, there was suddenly an enormous voice at the back said, Turn em on, Albert, turn em on and suddenly all the lights in creation blazed down.

David Attenborough16:37

And I was absolutely cascading perspiration with embarrassment. And it was really awful. The lights went up and down about three times and and of course the audience got extremely restive and poor Robert Craft had to try and continue.

David Attenborough16:50

It was the most dreadful occasion. However, the second half was the Firebird, in which Stravinsky conducted. And we did record it, and that recording exists, and it is one of the most m marvellous pieces of of musical control. So I like to hear about a Firebird.

Presenter18:07

The Firebird, Stravinsky conducting the Columbia Symphony Orchestra.

Presenter18:11

So, back with a sigh of relief from administrations to the ex-headhunters. What was the first series you did?

David Attenborough18:19

We did something called the Tribal Eye, which was about um tribal sculpture, tribal art in different societies.

Presenter18:26

Not an animal series. Not an animal.

David Attenborough18:27

Not an Animal series, uh because I thought that uh just after I had resigned from the BBC people were being nice enough to let me do something, you know, that why I wasn't particularly known for, whereas if I had done animals straight away, I'd never have got back to anthropology, I think.

Presenter18:41

And you did a series called Eastwood with Attenborough. What was that?

David Attenborough18:45

Oh, well oh, that's quite you are correct, yes. Um that was indeed a a trip to Borneo, mostly and Salibi's and Sumatra in in Indonesia, which we did with Richard Brock, and actually had been set up while I was still on the staff, because while I was administrator uh I still thought that it was uh in order to keep sane uh and reasonably fit, one ought to go away about every eight eighteen months uh and make another programme. You would discover what the latest film stocks were, this is my line anyway, and what what the new cameras were and so on.

Presenter19:20

Permits.

David Attenborough19:22

Record

Presenter19:23

Number six.

David Attenborough19:24

Well, uh as I uh have said, I've had some experience of this uh game of taking away records for your desert island, and one of the things that I uh have been doing on recent trips is to take something that I don't know at all, but I feel it would be quite nice to sort of get into.

David Attenborough19:42

And I think I'd like to take something that I haven't heard at all by Johann Dismas Zelenka.

Presenter20:44

An excerpt from the first trio sonata by Zelenka.

Presenter20:49

Now, you've completed, and being shown at the moment, your own personal blockbuster, Life on Earth. Tell me about it. Tell me how it originated and what you had in mind.

David Attenborough20:59

Well, once the the pattern of a a thirteen part one hour series of programmes which dealt in a fairly serious and methodical way with

David Attenborough21:09

with some part of n knowledge. Once that pattern was set, it was quite obvious that the natural for such treatment was the animal world. And that idea occurred to me, but it certainly occurred to the Natural History Unit down in Bristol, particularly to people like Chris Parsons and Richard Brock and John Sparks, who were producers down there. And so when I resigned and became free to do it, we got together and hatched this particular series. The idea being that we should start with the very simplest animals or the very simplest form of life and work our way through as indeed animal life developed.

Presenter21:48

The whole story of evolution.

David Attenborough21:50

Yes.

Presenter21:50

Yeah.

David Attenborough21:51

An enormous

Presenter21:52

was amount of preparation for a start.

David Attenborough21:53

Uh Yes, it um

David Attenborough21:56

Because each programme was going to be a mosaic, uh there was one programme on birds and one programme on amphibians and so on. Obviously, if you're going to do one programme on birds, you need birds from the North Pole and the South Pole and from Africa and South America and so on. And it was no good going to Australia to film Bower Birds and then coming back and realizing you should also have filmed Frogs or Coral on the Barrier Reef. So you had to have the whole series written before you started. So I sat down and and wrote a script a fortnight for six months. How long altogether for the job?

David Attenborough22:28

Three years. It was almost exactly three years ago that we've seriously started full time.

Presenter22:32

Yes, and there's also a book.

David Attenborough22:34

Well, uh we had to rethink the whole thing, because if you make a film on birds you can't just take the script because you don't have any of the pictures, so you have to rewrite it, which in its way was very sanitary as far as I was concerned, and I really enjoyed writing it.

Presenter22:48

At which stage did you write it? When when the when the films were complete?

David Attenborough22:51

Well, the films aren't all totally complete. Um because, as we all know, work expands to occupy time available, and if the film is not actually going out until whatever the date is, then you don't really finish it until you have to.

Presenter23:08

I see.

David Attenborough23:08

So and the answer is that the book was written before the series was complete.

Presenter23:13

Yeah.

Presenter23:13

You have gazed on wonders, David. What were the best moments, what you look back on with supreme satisfaction?

David Attenborough23:21

an enormous number of things of great variety. Going down into Chesapeake Bay on a given date, which you had actually predicted by reading the literature, which was one night in spring when the moon was in this particular position,

David Attenborough23:41

According to the literature,

David Attenborough23:43

horseshoe crabs, which are an extremely ancient form of uh crab, about uh eight inches long.

Presenter23:50

Yeah.

David Attenborough23:50

would come up out of the sea to breed.

David Attenborough23:52

And I'd seen the fossils of these things uh in Germany about a month previously, dating from what, a hundred and fifty million years old, something of that sort.

David Attenborough24:04

And then I flew to America.

David Attenborough24:07

And on this one day which we had predicted

David Attenborough24:10

We arrived at about four o'clock in the afternoon and we said, Where are the horseshoe crabs? and they said, Oh, they'll be coming up in about an hour and a half. We walked down to the beach and a million horseshoe crabs just slowly came up out of the sea to lay their eggs. And that thought that that had been going on for 150 million years, just like that.

Presenter24:29

That was fairly moving.

Presenter24:32

Let's go back to music. Where are we? Number seven.

David Attenborough24:36

Well, one of the great pleasures of um being an administrator, a programme administrator in the BBC was that you did meet some very, very remarkable people. And one of the meetings I most value was with Benjamin Britton. And so I liked a a bit of of Britain's music and I think perhaps a bit of the Spring Symphony, which will do me very well because it not only reminds me of Britain, but also of Spring and the English Spring, and I guess I'd like to hear a bit of that on a Desert Island.

Speaker 225:06

The sea square, the skin square, the square

Speaker 225:18

It's fine.

Presenter26:04

An excerpt from Benjamin Britton's Spring Symphony, conducted by the composer.

Presenter26:10

You're one person we'd never have to worry about on a desert island. I mean, if you couldn't make it reasonably satisfactorily, nobody could.

David Attenborough26:18

Well, I'm not so sure, but anyway, I'll I'll take the confidence.

Presenter26:22

Right.

David Attenborough26:22

Uh

Presenter26:22

How are you in small birds when you try to escape?

David Attenborough26:26

Yes, I'd certainly I'd certainly try to escape because I am quite sure that uh I um am like the rest of Homo sappiens a social being and uh I think after about a week I think your own company gets quite boring. Uh

Presenter26:41

How to talk to somebody.

David Attenborough26:43

Last record.

David Attenborough26:45

Um the last record I don't have any particular reason for choosing, except that it does seem to me just one of the most sublime pieces of music that exists. I have taken it away with me on every single trip I've ever been to that I've taken music, and I certainly wouldn't want to be on the desert island without it. It's uh Mozart's uh G minor Quintet.

Presenter28:07

The opening of the third movement of the Mozart G minor quintet, K five one six, by the Amadeus Quartet, augmented.

Presenter28:16

If you would take just one disk of the eight, which would it be?

David Attenborough28:20

That one, the Mercedes.

Presenter28:21

That's it.

Presenter28:23

And one luxury to take to the island with you?

David Attenborough28:27

Well, um I don't know whether you whether it's out and beyond the rules. I would like uh to take binoculars, does th that's a bit useful, is that all right? Binoculars well, we'll pass binoculars, yes. But otherwise a large crate of chocolate.

Presenter28:42

Well, it's up to your snap decision which binoculars, right? Better for the figure.

David Attenborough28:44

Do not

David Attenborough28:45

Better for the figure.

Presenter28:46

Yeah.

Presenter28:46

And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare and We don't allow big encyclopedias.

David Attenborough28:51

No problem at all. Shifts and Expedients of Camp Life, etcetera., as it says in the title, by Lord and Baines, published in eighteen sixty eight.

David Attenborough29:01

Um mister Baines was with Livingston. mister Lord was a captain of the Royal Artillery.

David Attenborough29:07

It is packed with the most invaluable information for castaways.

Presenter29:14

It's a very sturdy book. There's an awful lot in it.

David Attenborough29:15

It's an awful lot, isn't it? Well, yes, there's a chapter on well, not a chapter, there's a good paragraph on how to baffle alligators.

David Attenborough29:22

on um building boats, on making fire. And Baines, as I say, was with Livingston. And when you do these things you actually feel that that was what Livingston was doing. It's an invaluable document.

Presenter29:33

Great. Will you give us the title once more?

David Attenborough29:36

Shifts and Expedience of Camp Life by Lord and Baines.

Presenter29:40

Plenty. And thank you, David Attenborough, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc. Thank you very much, Ryan. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 129:55

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