What comes to mind when you think of David Attenborough? Maybe you picture him sitting amid Rwandan mountain gorillas, grinning as one of them tries to take off his shoes. Or crouching in a colony of fuzzy king penguin chicks as they peer inquisitively into the camera. Or being lunged at by an angry four-tonne elephant seal. In my mind’s eye, he is standing on a mountaintop, declaiming in gale-force winds like Moses in a cagoule.
For successive generations of viewers, Attenborough doesn’t just illuminate the natural world, he is its sole representative. His voice-of-God narration is inimitable and his knowledge irrefutable as he invites us to see the world through new eyes. Remarkably, at 99 years old, he is still working. He can currently be seen in Ocean with David Attenborough, a documentary in which, standing on a deserted beach in Dorset, white hair blowing sideways, he reflects on his century of life, his approaching mortality, and the ocean as “our planet’s life support system and our greatest ally against climate catastrophe”.
