Profile: Sir David Attenborough

THE Arctic and Antarctic, says Sir David Attenborough in his new series Frozen Planet, are places of superlatives. It is a comment which he might, were he not a modest man, apply to his own life and career.

At 85 years old, he is the jewel in the crown of British television, and emblematic of those values to which programme-makers should aspire – intelligence, curiosity, entertainment, passion and compassion. To say that the shows he has created and fronted for the BBC make it worth paying one’s licence fee is like saying the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere makes it worth inflating one’s lungs. Attenborough’s work at the heart of our broadcasting culture does not simply represent value for money; it has been enriching and revelatory.

Born in 1926, the son of an academic father, he read geology and zoology at Cambridge then joined the BBC in 1952, following a period working in publishing and serving with the Royal Navy. He resigned to study at the LSE, but rejoined the corporation before completing his postgraduate degree.

He became controller of the fledgling BBC2 in 1965, ordering a range of programmes including such influential cultural touchstones as Monty Python’s Flying Circus and The Old Grey Whistle Test. To make the most of colour television, Attenborough introduced televised snooker and commissioned Kenneth Clark to write and present Civilisation, the landmark series on the history of art and architecture. Civilisation established the blueprint for the sort of documentary Attenborough would later make his own – authored, authoritative, weighty and full of wonders.

Take the most recent example. The first episode of the seven-part Frozen Planet was broadcast on Wednesday, attracting 6.82 million viewers. It was filmed over four years, and there is a strong sense throughout of being exposed to astonishing sights which we have simply never seen before: the birth of an iceberg, say, or the death of a bison brought down by wolves. There are moments of beautiful delicacy (the formation of a snowflake), delicate brutality (a killer whale plucking a seal, like an hors d’oeuvre, from an ice floe) and whimsical comedy (surfing penguins).

The ghosts of Scott and Amundsen hovered quietly above much of the first episode, and – without wanting to overplay this analogy – Frozen Planet seems to have been made with something of the same pioneering and courageous spirit which characterised those polar expeditions of the early 20th century. Film crews devoted months to diving beneath the Antarctic ice sheet in water so cold that, even in insulated suits, being submerged for more than an hour would mean their death. They took risky helicopter flights over the crater of Mount Erebus, an active volcano, and spent Christmas Day wearing Santa hats while exploring its mysterious ice caves, which are choked with deadly fumes.

Attenborough himself was a rather static figure during his brief appearances on screen at the north and south poles, although one must applaud the octogenarian for braving temperatures of minus 35 Celsius when he could, presumably, have done the whole thing from a cosy editing suite in London. As ever, of course, it is his narration which impresses, his voice containing the wisdom, ardour and benevolence which have made him something of a secular saint; the sort of which even his friend Richard Dawkins might approve.

The description of Attenborough as a national treasure is one which he does not enjoy, dismissing it as “just longevity”. While there may well be something in that, one could argue that Michael Winner has been around for ages as well and we don’t care so much for him.

No, Attenborough’s popularity and the trust the public place in him are genuine and based on an integrity which we both intuit in his personality and detect in his work. He is aware of the responsibility that comes with the public believing what he says, which is why he has never appeared in an advert and why it took him so long to endorse climate change. It is notable, perhaps, that the only episode of Frozen Planet written by Attenborough himself is the final one – On Thin Ice – which will deal with global warming’s impact on the polar regions and the implications for the future of life on earth.

The “national treasure” thing is interesting, though. What is it about him that we treasure? One could argue that what makes Attenborough so appealing is that he has charismatic authority but not alienating expertise. No professional scientist, he readily admits to being, basically, a journalist. He is, in other words, an enthusiastic and well-informed amateur, and we British nature-lovers can certainly relate to that, even if he does have rather more air miles than the rest of us. When he said, recently, that following the death of Jane, his wife of almost 50 years, he had found consolation from grief in the natural world, it was an idea with wide public resonance.

It is useful to think of him, perhaps, as the modern equivalent of Gilbert White, the 18th-century clergyman and amateur naturalist whose bestselling (and still selling) The Natural History Of Selborne was the Age of Enlightenment equivalent of Attenborough’s television work – a masterpiece of close observation and new insights.

White died in 1793, still in thrall to swallows and earthworms. Attenborough, similarly, has no plans to retire from his study of the natural world. Surely, though, we are now witnessing the final great flourishing of his television work.

When he declares, at the start of Frozen Planet, that here is our opportunity to visit the icy wilderness and “witness its wonders perhaps for the last time”, he is referring to the consequences of global warming, but could equally be talking about his own career.

That is what gives Frozen Planet its sense of sublime melancholy – it is an elegy for both a fragile ecosystem and an astonishingly fertile working life.

• As a teenager, David Attenborough’s hero was George Mallory. “I thought at 14 that the only thing any decent red-blooded male could want to do in life is climb Everest.”

• His elder brother is the actor and director Lord Attenborough, right. “As children, we couldn’t have been more diverse. Do you think Dick would go and collect fossils?”

• Attenborough, an agnostic, has – with his friend the writer and scientist Richard Dawkins – called on the government to tackle the “threat” of Creationism being taught in schools.

• Last summer’s visit to the Bass Rock was the fulfilment of a lifetime’s ambition. “Bass Rock,” he said, “is perfection.”

• A skull discovered buried in Attenborough’s garden last year turned out to be that of Julia Thomas, a widow in her fifties who was murdered by her maid in 1879.