David Attenborough was hailed as a “global treasure” by Mary Robinson this week, as the natural history presenter turns 100 today.
The former president of Ireland, paying tribute to the man who has worked tirelessly to bring the treasures of the natural world to our attention, told the BBC that Attenborough was trusted by the public in a way that was exceptionally rare.
“There are very few people in the world who have that global trust as he has and as he deserves to have,” she said. “He is a kind of global treasure.”
From Ireland, which featured in his 2023 series, Wild Isles, he has used the extraordinary underwater footage of marine conservationist and documentary-maker Ken O’Sullivan and the prolific production and direction talents of zoologist-turned-film-maker Anne Sommerfield.
Dublin-raised wildlife biologist and National Geographic presenter Liz Bonnin meanwhile has often been mentioned as his natural successor.
O’Sullivan says there will certainly be others who carry on the craft of wildlife film-making, but none will be quite like Attenborough.
“What a beautiful man. He has that wise, kind, grandfatherly aura about him that you completely trust,” he says, echoing Mary Robinson.
“There’s nothing fake. His passion is so natural, his presentation is so natural. He always wrote his own scripts and in later years, he’d take what was written and make it his own.
“And I know from people who worked closely with him that he’d nearly always deliver his pieces to camera in one take.”
There were times when he absolutely had to. When recording The Life of Mammals in 2003, Attenborough was in a small boat tracking a blue whale as it came to the surface.
Naturalist David Attenborough launching the National Moth Recording Scheme at London Zoo in May 2007 in London. Photograph: Gareth Cattermole/Getty
The excitement is palpable as Attenborough declares he can see its tail just below the vessel and his timing is impeccable as he turns to the camera, points to the waters by his side and exclaims with delight: “There, the blue whale” just as the gigantic creature emerges.
He then seamlessly delivers lines conveying the enormity of an animal, the largest that exists or ever existed, and how only the vast ocean could support its extraordinary size.
Had he held his breath and froze spellbound like most of his viewers, the incredibly rare opportunity would have passed and the precious scene would never have materialised.
Ken O’Sullivan was thrilled to find his own whale footage, shot off the Irish coast for his series, North Atlantic, which was distributed by the BBC, had been included in a feature film of underwater clips compiled for and narrated by Attenborough.
“I was so proud. Something he said later on in life was that he was sorry he hadn’t spent more time filming closer to home.
Marine conservationist and documentary-maker Ken O’Sullivan
“We were all so excited by exotic species that maybe the wildlife in Britain and Ireland got a bit overlooked.
“He made up for it with some fabulous films and I was just so pleased to have my work included.
“It wasn’t just for my own sake, but because I want Ireland to be seen – and when David Attenborough is presenting your work, it’ll be seen.”
Anne Sommerfield had the “weird but wonderful” experience of showing rough cuts of the 2015 series, Great Barrier Reef, to Attenborough with her own voice recorded reading the script.
“This is the voice I grew up listening to and here he was listening to me,” she recalls.
“And he was so kind and charming about it. He joked about my lovely accent and said we just let Anne do the whole thing.”
At the time, there was much speculation that this would be Attenborough’s last programme and Sommerfield has huge admiration for how he handled the non-stop questions at press screenings.
“Everyone was trying to get the scoop – that’s it, David’s done. And he would always manage to gently bring the conversation back to the focus of the film – the Great Barrier Reef is in trouble, climate change is a serious issue.
“He would be asked outright – who will replace you? And he never showed annoyance.
“Personally, I don’t think there is a single person on the planet you can step into his shoes. He is one of a kind – such an important figure for the natural world and a really unifying voice that everyone can feel safe with.”
Co Offaly-based nature photographer Tina Claffey is renowned for her exquisite images of Ireland’s ethereal wetlands, but she has two small, plain items framed on her wall that she cherishes more than almost anything.
They are simple handwritten notes from Attenborough thanking her for sending him copies of her books.
David Attenborough during filming for the 1979 Life on Earth series. Photograph: BBC Studios
In the first, he tells her is “looking forward eagerly to sitting at leisure and taking in its words and images”.
In the second, he assures her he will enjoy the publication greatly, just as he did its predecessor.
Claffey still can’t quite believe they’re real or that he went to the effort of writing them.
“I sent the books entirely without expectation. Just the thought of him maybe holding them in his hand was enough for me,” she says.
“The amount of stuff he must get sent to him from all over the world, and he took the time to write a personal thank-you. Twice. It’s made my life.”
If there’s a reverence in how Claffey speaks of Attenborough, it is echoed in a vast church of admirers who worship the broadcaster, author and, latterly, activist, who has been bringing the world’s natural marvels into wonder-starved sitting-rooms since the 1950s.
Co Offaly-based nature photographer Tina Claffey
He now generates wonder himself. His 100th birthday falls today, May 8th, but he is still working, still caring, still captivating.
Ella McSweeney got to shake hands with him. “I might have held his hand a little bit too long,” the broadcaster and Irish Times columnist says of their meeting at the Wildscreen festival of wildlife filmmaking in Bristol in the early 2000s.
Another of her heroes, Éamon de Buitléar, made the introduction, and McSweeney found herself in conversation with a man of immense presence.
“He is incredibly charismatic and so modest,” she says.
“He was very sincere, intentional with his words, and interested. He didn’t talk about himself… he was interested in me, asking me about things.
“What I love first and foremost about him is that he just so interested in everything outside of himself.
“And his commitment to public service programming. And his scripts. They are so well-crafted, and he carries the message in them astonishingly well.”
Anything else? “He’s also extremely good-looking. Very handsome.”
Flossie Donnelly at he Save Our Seas protest in 2024. Photograph: Sam Boal/Collins Photo
It’s a point Flossie Donnelly also raises almost bashfully. The 19-year-old environmentalist from Sandycove, who became known for her beach-cleaning charity aged just nine, is now in her first year studying marine biology in Portsmouth University.
“I know it’s not the first thing I should mention, but I was watching old footage of him when he started out and I just thought he was really attractive, absolutely gorgeous,” he says of watching the shirtless adventurer on the high seas.
Attenborough also inspired Donnelly by his pure persistence.
She didn’t have an easy time at school “because of everything I was doing outside of school”, she says.
Despite her passion for protecting the seas and marine life, it would have been easier to adopt the more “normal” preoccupations of Dublin teens.
Instead, she continued exploring and learning about her coastal home, just as Attenborough had begun uncovering nature by poking around in the earth of the Leicestershire countryside when he was a boy.
“I’m so glad I did stick with it, and he’s definitely been an inspiration,” she says.
David Attenborough in conversation with members of the public from the inaugural UK-wide Climate Assembly, at the House of Commons, London, September 2021. Photograph: John Nguyen/PA Wire
She doesn’t hesitate to nominate the place where she most wants to follow his tracks and hopefully stretch the boundaries of his innovative film-making techniques even further.
“That’s easy – the Galapagos,” she says, recalling Attenborough’s stunning footage for the ground-breaking 1979 series, Life on Earth, and his return visits in later years.
Although he did not personally travel to the islands for their inclusion in his 2016 Planet II series, being 90 years old at the time, the Galapagos produced one of its highlights – the heart-stopping flight of an iguana from rocks seething with hungry snakes.
It’s a segment that sticks in the mind of Minister of State with special responsibility for Nature Christopher O’Sullivan – along with Attenborough with the gorillas, and with the Lyrebird, heartbreakingly mimicking the sound of the chainsaws destroying its habitat – and too many more Attenborough moments for him to mention.
While years ago the household had come to a standstill for the weekly airing of Glenroe, for the young O’Sullivan, Attenborough was the real TV magic.
“I have vivid memories of being a small child, gazing up at the television at this man, a giant and an adventurer, with a steady, wise voice and a mesmerising depth of knowledge,” he says.
“Every now and then I return to these stories on YouTube, including the older ones from his first expeditions in the 1950s and ’60s, and I wonder how many of the species he showed us back then are still in existence.
‘I think he thought that showing people the wonder of nature would have been sufficient to safeguard it, but it wasn’t’
— Ecologist and author Pádraic Fogarty
“I do know though that, had he not given us these amazing glimpses into the nature of life on Earth, we would’ve lost even more.”
Christopher O’Sullivan hits on an issue that has caused debate and attracted some trenchant criticism: has Attenborough’s work actually protected nature, or did he leave it too late to show it needed protection?
[ David Attenborough: Mass extinction is ‘on the horizon’Opens in new window ]
While in recent years he has silenced world leaders and business chiefs with his plain-speaking addresses to the UN climate summits and World Economic Forum, and filmed the arresting A Life on Our Planet tracking nature’s devastating decline over his own lifetime, the question remains of what might have been if he had spoken out earlier.
“There is an element of nature being a bit of a spectacle in his programmes, about it tipping towards nature as entertainment,” McSweeney says of his first 50 years of programming.
“In recent years he has pivoted towards advocacy and he has been brilliant at it, but the conservation message perhaps wasn’t pushed early enough – and I think the danger of wonder over warning was there.
“But that’s a bigger question that all of us in media need to grapple with – how do you balance trying to interest people and inspire them with things that are difficult and discomforting?”
Naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough at home in London in 1990. Photograph: Richard Baker/In Pictures Ltd/Corbis/Getty
Donnelly recognises that dilemma too, but believes Attenborough has balanced “the beauty and the loss” well in recent years.
“It’s not easy to get the right tone. As Mary Robinson says: hope energises, fear paralyses. He’s trying to not paralyse us into giving up.”
Ecologist and author Pádraic Fogarty says he understands what Attenborough, who he regards as “a hero”, was trying to do.
“I think he thought that showing people the wonder of nature would have been sufficient to safeguard it, but it wasn’t,” he says.
“His progammes presented the natural world in a way that wasn’t accurate, and for many years we were watching these amazing scenes of abundance and diversity, right into the 2000s, when it was becoming clearer and clearer that this world he was showing on our screens did not actually exist.
“I have sympathy for him. Nobody wants to see a walrus fall off a cliff,” he says.
Fogarty is referencing the Our Planet series, which Attenborough narrated, and which faced the wrath of outraged viewers for showing walruses smashing into rocks like discarded mattresses as they plummeted to their death from cliffs where they were forced to rest because climate change melted their ice floes.
“In fairness to him, the fact that he has kept going and modified his message is impressive.”
It is also clear from Attenborough’s countless interviews, his numerous books and many other writings, that he knew he had to have different messages for different audiences.
During a trip to Ireland to deliver a public lecture at the RDS in 1980, RTÉ archive footage shows him jocularly dispensing advice to Gay Byrne on the Late Late Show about how to overcome fear of mice and what to do if a spider drops into your bath.
On the same trip, he shared similarly light-hearted anecdotes with Pat Kenny about rattlesnakes and the unpredictability of filming in far-flung places, but he also had a much more sombre and prescient discussion about the state of the planet.
“I think the world at large is in grave danger. We are in danger actually of turning the world into a wasteland,” he told Kenny.
“We have treated the land with a technological contempt.”
He stressed the need for economic development and ecological conservation to work hand in hand.
‘If your viewing is essentially TikTok and watching tutorials about how to get ready for a night out, how are films about nature going to reach you?’
— Flossie Donnelly, environmentalist
“If we didn’t have development, the populations of the world would starve,” he said.
“Equally, unless we develop along sensible ecological lines, there will be catastrophe, and everyone will die anyway.”
He stressed the importance of spreading the word, saying: “You cannot do anything unless you have public awareness.”
“I can’t imagine what it’s like for him, seeing what’s happening now,” says Tina Claffey.
“It can’t be easy for him to see the state of the world the way it’s going when he has done his level best to get people to respect it.”
If there is comfort to be taken, it is probably in the breadth of documentary film he has created and the wealth of wildlife film-making talent he has inspired.
David Attenborough in London in 2023. Photograph: Aaron Chown/PA
The infectious passion that runs from Attenborough through people such as Ken O’Sullivan and others is undoubted – and public awareness has never been easier to raise thanks to technology.
But it’s never been harder to maintain either, also thanks to technology.
“We have loads of good film-makers now, but with people moving more and more to social media, I feel like, how will their work be seen?” says Donnelly.
“I get lots in my [social media] feed about nature and scuba-diving and beach-cleaning, because that’s what I look for.
“But if your viewing is essentially TikTok and watching tutorials about how to get ready for a night out, how are films about nature going to reach you?
“When I was a child, your screen time was TV. You sat down and watched the TV and you saw these amazing documentaries in full.
“The next generation are on their phones – that’s the only screen they’re interested in – and I don’t know how we’ll get the message to them.
“We have to try obviously. David Attenborough has kept trying. I’ll be so depressed when he’s no longer with us. To me, he’s irreplaceable.”