Book review: Life on Air, by David Attenborough

LATER THIS MONTH, SIR DAVID Attenborough sets out for the Antarctic, filming for natural history series The Frozen Planet. He is 82. He spent his 80th birthday with marine iguanas on the Galapagos Islands for his series Life in Cold Blood. It is hard to imagine he would spend it any other way.

When the original version of this book was released in 2002, The Life of Mammals was about to air, and the further two series, Life in the Undergrowth and Life in Cold Blood, were still to be commissioned by the BBC. This revised and updated edition sees Attenborough recount the making of these three acclaimed series and discuss the problems facing wildlife film-makers today, in an age when "viewers can have little chance of deducing from the screen what is the truth and what fiction". The stories from the most recent years of Attenborough's career are as fascinating as those of the previous half-century. So it's all the more of a shame that the grammatical errors that litter the pages have not been caught.

Attenborough has remained with the BBC his whole career in various guises since joining in the 1950s. Having been turned down, aged 26, for a job in radio, his rejected application made its way through the corridors of the Beeb, and a phone call offered him a way out of the academic publishing job he knew was not for him.

Attenborough's first presenting job was not a success (he later discovers that a memo stated that he was not be used again in a presenter role, for, quite simply, "His teeth are too big." But soon afterwards, during his trainee-ship with the Talks Department, a chance arose. They were making a show about race and required an example of a Caucasian. Attenborough was it, and so made his second, more successful (non-speaking) appearance on early TV. It was hardly a starring role, but in these experimental days the BBC required ideas and enthusiasm, and Attenborough was brimming with each. He still is.

There are two distinct parts to Attenborough's illustrious career, and both are covered here with equal energy, warmth, humour, and stunning photographs. One is his work in far-flung and, at that time, often dangerously remote, parts of the world, filming exotic animals whose likes had never before been seen on the still-monochrome television sets back home. The other is his rise up the ranks of the BBC, which saw him made Controller of BBC2 and, eventually, of both channels. He oversaw the introduction of colour television, in the days when a brave Director of Engineering on Late Night Line-Up would tentatively suggest, "Do you think that in tomorrow night's programme we might introduce … a bowl of fruit?" It represented a sizeable challenge to the new technology.

But Attenborough was used to overseeing firsts in British television. Some time earlier, after an edict had been issued that the BBC needed to find "raconteurs, natural gems" to combat its often "stiff and unrelaxed" style, he introduced Bill Dalton to the viewing public. He was a rat-catcher, but was briefed by Attenborough that, as a nation of animal lovers, the Brits did not want to hear "the gruesome details of their demise". Arriving with two wire cages packed with rats, Dalton understood perfectly the predicament. Now live on air, he grabbed a rat by its tail and started swinging it around, before suddenly remembering his instructions and adding, "Now I don't want you to think … that I am in any way maltreatin' this rat, but unless I get 'im slightly dizzy, the bugger will bit me." "It was, I think, the first time that word had been heard on British television," Attenborough adds, with a smattering of cheeky pride.

When Attenborough discovered Bill Dalton he found a natural raconteur. It takes one to know one.

But Attenborough's life has not been without sadness. Early in the book he recalls the premature death of Jack Lester, one of his early intrepid crew, who had been recruited from London Zoo. The explanation is brief and unsentimental. Much later, he devotes less than a page to the sudden death of his wife, Jane. "It was the eve of our 47th wedding anniversary," he adds, simply. If outpourings of grief and personal philosophy are what you're after, then this is not the place to find them, but Attenborough's stoic attitude is, as it has always been with his work, simply to get on with it. And that he did.

He was never set to give in to old age, just as he had never submitted to the restraints of a desk job (no matter how senior that job happened to be), always finding a reason for a long-haul jaunt, and eventually resigning his post to return full-time to film-making. He is still the little boy, hunting for fossils in the Leicestershire countryside and inviting visitors to view his "museum"; the man who brought home bush babies from a trip when his own children were young, ignoring visitors' enquiries about the "strange perfume they detected in the hall"; still the nature lover who made TV history so many times over while living out his wildest dreams.

Refreshingly blind to his own iconic status, he admires in another naturalist a "joy and reverence" that "captivated viewers". How very apt.