'He doesn’t hold back on the fact that that life in the animal kingdom is a brutal survival of the fittest': Happy birthday Sir David Attenborough
The beloved broadcaster, natural historian and writer turns 100 today — and we have a lot to thank him for.
One of the most delightful programmes on recent television has been Sam & Ade Go Birding (Channel 5), in which Samuel West, who plays the prickly Siegfried Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small, takes a friend, fellow actor Ade Edmondson, birdwatching.
It turns out that Samuel, an RSPB ambassador, is an obsessive birder who records sightings in minute detail daily, goes off on tangents and knows a lot of fascinating facts. Ade, the perfect foil, cheerfully admits to knowing little about avian life and declares contentment at communing with a robin.
Sir David introducing an audience of children to a capybara, at the Royal Geographical Society in London, in 1956.
They view awesome clouds of pink-footed geese swirling over the marshes of Holkham, north Norfolk, at first light, chase a rare warbler in west Cornwall and listen for bitterns amid the reedy Somerset Levels.
Friendship, wine, cooking, grief, jokes, companionable silence and open-mouthed wonder are involved. It’s gentle: the two actors resist declaiming or the temptation to bounce around like noisy Tiggers.
Reviewing the latest bird books in this week's issue, naturalist and writer Mark Cocker, who begins a new series this week on less popular members of the avian world, reflects why birds, the ‘all-flying, all-singing dinosaur descendants’, capture hearts and are loved disproportionately over other species.
Sir David speaks to a young fan as he signs copies of his latest publication 'Life In The Undergrowth', published in relation to the BBC One series, at the Natural History Museum, in 2005.
Sir David bonds with a meerkat while filming the BBC series 'Life of Mammals'.
Sir David Attenborough, who appears on our Frontispiece this week in honour of his 100th birthday (May 8), has been responsible for not only fostering this with the most mesmerising birdy footage — chubby puffins, cadaverous vultures, featherweight hummingbirds — but for enlightening us about an extraordinary spread of species.
Like Samuel, Sir David had thespian relations, a cultured upbringing, an early fascination with natural history — in his case collecting newts — and grasped the bigger environmental picture and Man’s irresponsibility at a young age.
His background in general programme-making shows in the musical cadences of his speech and clear diction; there is a perpetual hint of humour, the avoidance of excitable shouting and, crucially, knowing when to stay off camera.
The watcher is irresistibly drawn in, whether Sir David is musing on copulating geckos, chimps pulling funny faces, a pack of killer whales about to massacre a porpoise or the speed with which foxglove petals open.
The camera work is, of course, outstanding, but the brilliance — the USP — is in the subtle combination of wonder and reality, however soothingly delivered.
A python greets Sir David at Taronga Park Zoo in Sydney, in 2003.
He doesn’t hold back on the fact that Nature in all its splendour is ‘red in tooth and claw’, that life in the animal kingdom is a brutal survival of the fittest. Creatures predate each other and don’t always know when to stop. Their lifestyles can be as hard to watch as they are spectacular.
Thank you, Sir David, for bringing this blend of exhilaration and education into our sitting rooms, and Happy Birthday.
This feature originally appeared in the May 6, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.
