David Attenborough Biography
A native of Isleworth, Middlesex, England David Attenborough is an English broadcaster, biologist, natural historian as well as an author. He is famously known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, the nine natural history documentary series forming the Life collection, a comprehensive survey of animal and plant life on Earth.
Attenborough was a senior manager at the BBC, having worked as controller of BBC Two and director of programming for BBC Television in the 1960s and 1970s.
His filmography as a writer, presenter, and narrator spans eight decades; it includes Zoo Quest, Natural World, Wildlife on One, the Planet Earth franchise, The Blue Planet, and its sequel. He is the only person to have won BAFTAs in all of the categories black and white, color, high-definition, 3D, and 4K resolutions.
David Attenborough Age
Attenborough is 96 years old as of 2022. He was born on 8 May 1926 in Isleworth, United Kingdom.
David Attenborough Height
David stands at a height of 5 feet 10 inches or 1.78 m tall.
David Attenborough Family
Attenborough was born to his father Frederick, who was principal, and mother Mary Clegg in Isleworth, Middlesex, and grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester.
He is the middle of three sons; his elder brother, Richard (who died in 2014), became an actor and director, and his younger brother, John (died in 2012), was an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo.
During the Second World War, through a British volunteer network known as the Refugee Children’s Movement, his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Germany.
David Attenborough Wife
David was married to Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Orie. The couple got married in 1950 and divorced in 1997.
David Attenborough Children
David is a father of a son called Robert Attenborough, a senior lecturer and university professor, and a daughter Susan Attenborough.
David Attenborough Grandchildren
David had two children, Robert and Susan and two grandchildren.
David Attenborough Education
Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester. He won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge in the year 1945 to study geology and zoology and obtained a degree in natural sciences.
David Attenborough BBC
After leaving the Navy, Attenborough took a position editing children’s science textbooks for a publishing company. He soon became disillusioned with the work and in 1950 applied for a job as a radio talk producer with the BBC.
Although David was rejected for this job, his CV later attracted the interest of Mary Adams, head of the Talks (factual broadcasting) department of the BBC’s fledgling television service.
Attenborough, like most Britons at that time, did not own a television, and he had seen only one programme in his life. However, he accepted Adams’ offer of a three-month training course, and in the year 1952, he joined the BBC full-time.
Initially discouraged from appearing on camera because Adams thought his teeth were too big, he became a producer for the Talks department, which handled all non-fiction broadcasts. His early projects included the quiz show Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? and Song Hunter, a series about folk music presented by Alan Lomax.
Attenborough’s association with natural history programs began when he produced and presented the three-part series Animal Patterns. The studio-bound program featured animals from London Zoo, with the naturalist Julian Huxley discussing their use of camouflage, aposematism, and courtship displays.
Through this program, Attenborough met Jack Lester, the curator of the zoo’s reptile house, and they decided to make a series about an animal-collecting expedition. The result was Zoo Quest, first broadcast in 1954, where Attenborough became the presenter at short notice due to Lester being taken ill.
In the year 1957, the BBC Natural History Unit was formally established in Bristol. Attenborough was asked to join it, but declined, not wishing to move from London where he and his young family were settled. Instead, he formed his own department, the Travel, and Exploration Unit,
which allowed him to continue to front Zoo Quest as well as produce other documentaries, notably the Travellers’ Tales and Adventure series. In the early 1960s, Attenborough resigned from the permanent staff of the BBC to study for a postgraduate degree in social anthropology at the London School of Economics, interweaving his study with further filming. However, he accepted an invitation to return to the BBC as controller of BBC Two before he could finish the degree.
