Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Broadcaster and naturalist who has seen more of the world than any person who has ever lived.
On the island
Eight records
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. coming at you all the time. But they've turned it into something really very happy and exhilarating.
Impromptu No. 1 in F minor, D. 935
It's a Part of an impromptu number one in F minor played by Imogen Cooper but by written by Schubert.
And the Glory of the Lord (from Messiah)
Academy and Chorus of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner
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.
if I'm on a desert island, the desert islands I know are... 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.
Goldberg VariationsFavourite
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.
Legong (Traditional Balinese Dance Music)
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.
Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner
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.
Soave sia il vento (from Così fan tutte)
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.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:56Do you get bored of being adored and venerated?
I'm very peachable if people know how to peach.
Presenter asks
10:58What do you remember about [the Jewish refugee children] who came to stay with you during the war?
two of them arrived, in theory going on to New York. And then... 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... 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.
Presenter asks
14:07Do you think [the natural world] is some great complex cosmic accident, or are you closer to the Lord because of it?
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... I'm not so confident as to say that I'm an atheist, I would prefer to say I'm an agnostic.
The keepsakes
The book
Shifts and Expedients of Camp Life, Travel, and Exploration
William Barry Lord and Thomas Baines
there is a book published in eighteen seventy one. called Shifts and Expedients of Camplife and Travel, 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.
The luxury
I'd love a piano. I absolutely have that. I could have a piano? '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.
Presenter asks
18:16Do you have a memory of the day that you told [your father] you had won your open scholarship to Cambridge?
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 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. And I remember very well it was during the war and we had an allotment. One day I was down digging. 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. And I remember it with great affection and pleasure.
Presenter asks
32:10Do you think any of the criticism [about filming the polar bear scene in captivity] was fair?
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... 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. 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
“perhaps the greatest naturalist who ever lived and had more effect on our thinking than anybody, Charles Darwin. Only spent four years travelling, and the rest of the time thinking.”
“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. 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.”
“I think I knew that before that. I mean, I think I knew that we are all part of of the same thing.”
“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.”