I often get letters, quite frequently, from people who say how they like the programmes a lot, but I never give credit to the almighty power that created nature.
You have to steer a course between not appalling people, but at the same time not misleading them.
Very few species have survived unchanged. There’s one called lingula, which is a little shellfish, a little brachiopod about the size of my fingernail, that has survived for 500 million years, but it’s survived by being unobtrusive and doing nothing, and you can’t accuse human beings of that.
It was regarded as a responsibility of the BBC to provide programs which have a broad spectrum of interest, and if there was a hole in that spectrum, then the BBC would fill it.
You know, it is a terrible thing to appear on television, because people think that you actually know what you’re talking about.
London has fine museums, the British Library is one of the greatest library institutions in the world… It’s got everything you want, really.
I can mention many moments that were unforgettable and revelatory. But the most single revelatory three minutes was the first time I put on scuba gear and dived on a coral reef. It’s just the unbelievable fact that you can move in three dimensions.
I’ve been to Nepal, but I’d like to go to Tibet. It must be a wonderful place to go. I don’t think there’s anything there, but it would be a nice place to visit.
Apart from anything else, I am designed by evolution, like we all are: if we see a little thing like that, big eyes, tiny nose, we go ‘aaah’. That’s what evolution does. We are programmed to do that. So to find babies the most amazing, isn’t surprising, I don’t think.
An understanding of the natural world and what’s in it is a source of not only a great curiosity but great fulfillment.
Before the BBC, I joined the Navy in order to travel.
It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now.
An understanding of the natural world and what’s in it is a source of not only a great curiosity but great fulfillment.
It’s extraordinary how self-obsessed human beings are. The things that people always go on about is, ‘tell us about us’, ‘tell us about the first human being’. We are so self-obsessed with our own history. There is so much more out there than what connects to us.
Many individuals are doing what they can. But real success can only come if there is a change in our societies and in our economics and in our politics.
Nature isn’t positive in that way. It doesn’t aim itself at you. It’s not being unkind to you.
I’ve been bitten by a python. Not a very big one. I was being silly, saying: ‘Oh, it’s not poisonous…’ Then, wallop! But you have fear around animals.
Dealing with global warming doesn’t mean we have all got to suddenly stop breathing. Dealing with global warming means that we have to stop waste, and if you travel for no reason whatsoever, that is a waste.
If I can bicycle, I bicycle.
Birds are the most popular group in the animal kingdom. We feed them and tame them and think we know them. And yet they inhabit a world which is really rather mysterious.
What I am interested in with birds, just as I am with spiders or monkeys, is what they do and why they do it.
To suggest that God specifically created a worm to torture small African children is blasphemy as far as I can see. The Archbishop of Canterbury doesn’t believe that.
I like animals. I like natural history. The travel bit is not the important bit. The travel bit is what you have to do in order to go and look at animals.
Pages: 1 2
