The real David Attenborough

With a career spanning more than six decades, Sir David Attenborough remains one of the most loved and respected people on television – and at 92 he’s showing no signs of slowing down. But although nature fans adore him he admits he hates being regarded a

AN INTERVIEW with David Attenborough is like a game of chess. There are stand-offs and exchanges, lures and skewers, but today he’s not trying to intimidate his opponent psychologically, as some interviewers have accused him of doing in the past. Instead of being “prickly”, he’s being strategic in the way he deflects and self-deprecates.

And he’s a deft user of body language to convey meaning he’d rather not commit to speech. When, for example, I ask him if having had a heart-to-heart about climate change with American president Barack Obama in 2015, he’d now like to do the same with the current incumbent of the Oval Office, President Donald Trump, a global warming denier, he slowly closes his eyes. Then he gives a deep sigh and opens them again before saying in that well-modulated, much impersonated, breathy voice of his: “I don’t think so, because I don’t think Trump is susceptible to logical argument. I fear it would be him saying black is white and we’d bandy our prejudices with one another.”

And when I ask how much of the fan mail he gets – around 30 letters a day – comes from female admirers declaring their undying love for him, he pulls a face and gives a broad, off-the-shoulder shrug that says, I know what’s behind the question and I’m not going to play that game.

“Most of the fan mail I get is from people thanking me for making them more aware of the natural world,” he says with wilful neutrality.

I’m meeting him in his elegant, rectory-style house in Richmond, south-west London, which has been extended since the last time I interviewed him here, almost 20 years ago. He’s knocked through into an old neighbouring pub to make a modernist library, complete with gallery, and this airy space is populated with fossils and phallic-looking tribal pottery on tables, as well as thousands of books and classical music CDs on shelves. There’s also a grand piano, which he plays every day. Open on its music stand is today’s piece, a score for a Schumann waltz.

When we last met he was mourning the death of his beloved wife of 47 years, Jane. She died suddenly in 1997 from a brain haemorrhage, and he told me he was using work as a way of trying to stay ahead of his grief. This may still be partly the case, because at 92 he’s showing no signs of slowing down. He’s about to go to Chernobyl for the World Wildlife Fund and has just returned from a trip down the Zambezi, which I probably should’ve guessed he’d done before – “My dear chap, I went down it from source to mouth in 1964, just me and a cameraman for three months.”

And the number of one-hour programmes he has in the pipeline is in double figures – “I did the commentary for one last week which used drones to picture blue whales out in the ocean – breathtaking shots, the angle just right for the light, these immense leviathans seen as through glass.”

He also recently released a revised and updated edition of Life on Earth, to mark the 40th anniversary of his landmark series. It was an exercise he found nostalgic.

“I hadn’t read it for 40 years and was relieved to find the basic structure was correct. The big revelation since then was the discovery of feathered dinosaurs, which has resolved a venomous debate among the scientists.”

He’s not lonely because his daughter, Susan, a retired primary-school headmistress, keeps him company here, as well as looking after his business affairs. (He also has a son, Robert, who’s an anthropologist in Australia.) To relax he reads, writes letters and contemplates the flora and fauna in his walled garden. And he watches TV.

“I usually just watch natural history. Programmes made by my mates.” His smooth, pink features crease into a smile. “I like to keep up with what the bastards are doing!”

He must have more eclectic taste than that, I suggest, given that as controller of BBC2 in the late ’60s, and director of programmes in the early ’70s, he commissioned groundbreaking shows such as British series Monty Python. Does he keep an eye on current trends in comedy?

“When you’re in your nineties the sort of jokes you laugh at are the same ones you laughed at when you were 50. Modern comedies you look at with a stony face and ask, ‘Is that funny?’”

‘I usually watch natural history. Programmes made by my mates'