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- [00:01]
A
From the Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story on Saturday. I'm Manveen Rana, The man for whom the term national treasure could have been invented. Sir David attenborough has turned 100 to Marcus Centenary. And to take stock of the remarkable character who brought so much to national life and to audiences around the world, the Times has heard from Tony Lee Morrell, the writer and documentary filmmaker who began his career working with a living legend, Sir David attenborough, at the BBC's Natural History Unit. Here are his reflections on the Great.
- [01:03]
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Not many people can boast that their first job was researching for David Attenborough. I first walked through the doors of a BBC natural history unit on White Ladies Road in Bristol in the spring of 1993. To anyone interested in wildlife or television, it was a place that felt less like an office and more like a shrine. As a 21 year old fresh zoology graduate, I've been taken on as a researcher for the Private Life of Plants, a six part landmark series devoted entirely to flora.
- [01:51]
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It's taken over three years to track their territorial and sometimes predatory behavior. We've exposed their poisonous characteristics and yet without these organisms, neither you nor I would exist. There would be no food, no animals,
- [02:09]
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no life on earth. The Private Life of Plants with David attenborough, new on BBC1. On my first morning I was shown to a desk, handed a telephone and a bulging folder labeled Orchids and told, more or less cheerfully, that my first job was to find a sequence rare enough to justify sending David Attenborough halfway around the world to Japan. It was utterly thrilling. Within days I was on the phone to orchid specialists, faxing botanists in Japan, navigating conservation permissions and learning the art of international logistics before email and the Internet had made any of that easy. When the pollination story finally came together, a fleeting, exquisite interaction that took years to predict and seconds to capture, David traveled to film it. I was starstruck whenever he visited the office. That was my first lesson in working with David Attenborough. He was exactly as he appeared on screen, but more so what struck me was his humor. He waxed lyrical about filming the orchids and mimicked playing the violin with excitement. I later learned that he had a passion for Japanese antiquities, and going to Japan to film an orchid in bloom enabled him to revisit that interest. When he returned, he stopped by my desk, thanked me, called me my dear boy, and later sent me a signed copy of his book to accompany the series. It wasn't the gesture that mattered so much as the fact he remembered. Names mattered to him, people matter. He was courteous, curious and deeply attentive. He joined cruise for dinners. He listened. He asked questions that cut straight to the heart of the subject, whether botanical or human. There was no sense of hierarchy in conversation, even though his authority was never in doubt. At the Natural History Unit, he was omnipresent, not in a domineering way, but as a collaborator. He shaped scripts, refined narration and obsessed overtone the cadence of a line, the placement of a pause, the moral weight of a word. These things were enormously important to him, and watching him at work was like watching a master editor at a desk you didn't realize was there.
- [05:02]
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This extraordinary creature is half blind, half deaf, and this is just about as fast as it can move. That's what can happen to you if you live on nothing but leaves. It's a sloth.
- [05:26]
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What impressed me most was how hands on he remained. This was not a remote figure parachuting in to read a script. He was part of a machinery of programmaking, fully engaged in the craft. When the sequence worked, it, it was because he had carefully honed it. When it didn't, it was quietly let go. His authority was never exercised loudly. It didn't need to be. For a young researcher, the experience was intoxicating. You learnt quickly how exacting the standards were, how seriously storytelling was taken, and how much care went into making complex science intelligible without ever talking down to the audience. There was a sense that Natural History television had a responsibility to beauty, to accuracy, to wonder. David embodied that responsibility. I moved on from the Natural History Unit at the end of the 90s and went on to work across different BBC departments and genres. But I never stopped watching David's programs. From life on Earth to planet Earth, from a living planet to blue planet, his voice became a kind of constant, not just of narration, but of reassurance. He made people feel that the world was intelligible, ordered, worth paying attention to.
- [07:05]
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I see trees of green Red roses too I see them bloom for me and you and I think to myself what a wonderful world.
- [07:58]
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Our paths crossed again in 2004, this time under very different circumstances. I was now a producer and director, having worked my way up the television ladder, and I interviewed David for a retrospective on Jacob Brinofsky, presented by the mathematician's broadcaster's daughter, Lisa Jardine. The series revisited the ascent of man, which David had commissioned during his time as controller of BBC2, one of many reminders that before he became a planet's narrator, he. He had been among the most influential editors in British broadcasting. The Ascent of Man, along with Kenneth Clark's Civilization, which Attenborough also commissioned, became a template for the landmark series Life on Earth, which Attenborough would go on to present. Sitting opposite him in Lisa's flat in Bloomsbury, he was 78. By then, I saw another side of David Attenborough, older, certainly, but still piercingly sharp. His memory was formidable for names and dates, and his voice unchanged. He spoke of Branowski with genuine reverence, of science as a moral endeavor and of storytelling as a form of responsibility. It was clear that his belief in television's public purpose ran deep, not merely as entertainment, but as way of enlarging understanding. What struck me during that interview was how fully he inhabited history. He didn't simply recall decisions, he contextualised them. He understood how programmes sat within institutions, how commissioners shaped culture, how tone could influence generations. He wasn't just recasting the past, he was curating it. His sense of style was still there. He even asked Lisa about her Prada shoes. In 2015, I found myself on stage at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival collecting a special jury award for the Secret Life of youf House, a presenter led program I have produced and directed. Surrounded by filmmakers, scientists and many people who had once passed through the orbit of a natural history unit. I thanked David. It felt instinctive. Whatever paths we had taken, his influence was there in the grammar of the films, the seriousness of intent, the belief that television could still matter. As David has entered his 90s, his work has taken on a different urgency. Programs like Blue Planet 2 and extinction of Facts speak more directly, more starkly about the state of a planet. The tone has shifted, the wonder remains, but it is now accompanied by a recognition that beauty alone is no longer enough.
- [11:11]
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Some have speculated that that I've seen more of the natural world than anyone else. I've witnessed the natural world at its most fascinating and vibrant. But I've also witnessed startling changes, changes that are today threatening our very civilizations. What we do in the next few years will determine the next few thousand years.
- [11:40]
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David Attenborough has always been associated with optimism, with the idea that if people could see the natural world clearly, they would protect it. In his later work, there is an acceptance that clarity must sometimes give way to candour. To have worked with him, first as a young researcher clutching an orchid file, and later as a director across the table, is something for which I remain deeply grateful. He shaped not just a generation of viewers, but a generation of filmmakers. He showed us that attention was a form of respect. That storytelling carried responsibility and that curiosity sustained over a lifetime could become something close to wisdom. As we celebrate his hundredth year, that may be his greatest legacy.
- [12:37]
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I had rather thought that I would celebrate my 100th birthday quietly, but it seems that many of you have had other ideas. I've been completely overwhelmed by birthday greetings from preschool groups to care home residents and countless individuals and families of all ages. I simply can't reply to each of you all separately, but I would like to thank you all most sincerely for your kind messages. I wish those of you who have planned your own local events tomorrow have a very happy day.
- [13:23]
A
That was Tony Lee Morrell, writer and documentary filmmaker, reading out a piece he's written for the Times to mark Sir David Attenborough's hundredth birthday. You can find a text version of the piece online@thetimes.com the producer and sound designer today was Dave Creasy. The executive producer was Edward Drummond. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with more tomorrow.