Attenborough: a life on screen

Today, the 8th of May, marks the 100th birthday of leading British documentary maker and natural historian David Attenborough. His TV credits, which span eight decades, include 1979's Pioneering Life on Earth, 1993's Life in the Freezer, and Last Year's Kingdom. But what's the longer history of wildlife broadcasting? What first inspired Attenborough to report back from the front lines of the natural world? And how has he shaped our understanding of the climate crisis?

I caught up with media and cultural historian David Hendy to find out. David, thank you so much for being with us today on the History Extra podcast. We are talking in May 2026 to mark a hundred years since the birth of David Attenborough, who's a name that many people listening to this podcast will know. He's one of the sort of giants of 20th and 21st century broadcasting here in the UK.

So we're going to talk a little bit about some of the contributions he's made, both in terms of the TV medium, but also to our understanding of the world more generally. Before we get into all of that though, I thought we should explore what documentaries on wildlife and on the natural world were like in the decades before he made this massive contribution. Can you to start with tell us about some of the pioneering efforts that were made in the early days of broadcasting to chart the world around us? Yeah, I mean if we go really right back to the beginning of the BBC in the 1920s, there is sporadic attempts to to interest the listener, as it was then before television, in animals.

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