One big learning curve
THERE may be a generation that has only seen David Attenborough on Blue Planet but it is worth remembering what he does besides voiceovers. He is a naturalist, explorer, writer, broadcaster and was even the head of BBC2.
He tried detective work in ATTENBOROUGH AND THE GIANT ELEPHANT (Sunday, BBC1), a sad tale with a sadder ending. If there is anything positive about the story of Jumbo – said by his promoters to have been the world’s largest elephant – it is that he left a big impression.
Captured in Sudan, he ended up at London Zoo in 1865 and rapidly became the star attraction. “Jumbo” entered the language to mean anything colossal and children flocked to ride on his back in return for a penny bun.
Piecing together the hidden story, Attenborough went everywhere – from the memoirs of Jumbo’s keeper and the chemical make-up of his bones to the expert teams caring for modern-day jumbos at Amboseli National Park in Kenya.
He may have spent his days charming kids and chomping buns but the diet, the pounding of his bones on paving and the lack of elephant company took a terrible toll on Jumbo’s health.
His keeper could only quell Jumbo’s night-time rages by feeding him whisky, for which the elephant developed a fondness.
That did not help either and in 1882 he was shipped to New York, to join Barnum’s travelling circus.
Crowds had gathered in the middle of the night to see Jumbo leave London – there had even been a petition to prevent him going.
The public mood was similar across the pond, although the stress of touring made Jumbo’s bones so bad he could no longer even lie down. His death was a ghastly, unnecessary one – smashed by a freight train in 1885 as he was led across the tracks. Barnum spun it cleverly for the press, making out Jumbo had charged the train to save the life of his keeper.
More Attenborough detective work proved this to be bunkum. Yet his trips to Amboseli and his conversations with conservationists highlighted an important truth.
We are learning more now about these beautiful, complex beasts and how important it is to keep them in their natural habitat. That is a journey that could not have started without a ride on Jumbo’s back.
There was sadness and hope, too, in the life story of LEONORA CARRINGTON: THE LOST SURREALIST (Sunday, BBC4).
Her early life would not have looked out of place in a novel – the daughter of newly rich Lancashire industrialists, expected to marry into aristocracy but longed to paint.
As the Second World War loomed, she fled to Paris with her married lover, joining the Surrealist who, fond of overturning the world order as they were, still did not think women could be great painters.
After the love of her life was taken prisoner, she suffered a nervous breakdown and worse torments in a Spanish asylum. She ended up in Mexico where the colours and eerie spirituality ignited something deep in her and now, six years after her death, she is regarded as one of that country’s greatest artists. Over here people usually confuse her with the writer Dorothy Carrington.
Her sons spoke of her with shining eyes, recalling how she had told them about being expelled from school “for not collaborating”. She carried on not collaborating and on being expelled, it seemed, until she found her niche.