THE FABULOUS ATTENBOROUGH BROTHERS

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***Britain's fabulous Attenborough boys

**EmailService

Saturday, 22 July 2006 *

 

*When Richard and David Attenborough were boys, a Red Indian chief named

Grey Owl came to give a lecture in Leicester, England, where they lived.

Actually, it turned out he wasn't a Native American at all, but an

out-of-work merchant seaman from Hastings who had gone to Canada, where he

pretended to be an Indian and became one of the world's conservation

pioneers. It was 1936 and he was on a tour to tell the world of the

despoliation of the American wilderness. He was particularly keen on

beavers. *

 

*When the boys read in the local paper about his forthcoming lecture at the

De Montfort Hall, they begged their father to go. That much they agree on.

Thereafter their accounts diverge.

 

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* " When the curtains went back there stood this Red Indian - looking about 10

foot tall in a full war bonnet, " recalls Dickie. David says he sported a

single eagle feather. Grey Owl had published a book. " My brother, Dave, got

the book signed and marched out with it under his arm and I've never been

able to get that book off him to this day. Possession is nine tenths of the

law, and the bugger won't give it to me! " *

 

*David, the younger by three years, has a different recollection. " My dear

brother maintains that he came too, " he recounts. " I think that's rubbish, I

don't think he did. Anyway, I've got the book signed by Grey Owl and he

hasn't, so I reckon that's some kind of evidence. " *

 

*When sibling rivalry is strong, child psychiatrists will tell you, one

common strategy is for brothers to avoid competition by withdrawing from a

particular activity. This is why some siblings grow up with widely diverging

interests and abilities. *

 

*So it was in the Attenborough household. Richard, the less academic of the

pair - he couldn't even pass his School Certificate - took to acting and

spent all his time in the local theatre. He went on to become one of

Britain's best-known actors and film directors. David, who turned to

collecting fossils, insects and plants on his bike rides all over

Leicestershire and Rutland, went on to become one of the world's best-loved

television naturalists. *

 

*Their younger brother John, who was good at languages, became fixated by

cars and aeroplanes, and eventually got a job as an executive for Alfa Romeo

and ran a very successful string of garages in southern England. *

 

*David, of course, " can't bear motor cars " and has never learned to drive. *

 

*So fierce was their need for differentiation that when - during World War

II - Richard had joined the RAF, and soon after David had gone into the

Navy, John despite his interest in flying, decided he had to opt for the

Army. *

 

*For all that, there are striking similarities about the disparate careers

of the two men - now Sir David and Lord Attenborough - who were this month

both made " distinguished honorary fellows " of the University of Leicester. *

 

*It was the place they were brought up; their father was principal of the

university for two decades, and set them both high standards. After

Wyggeston Grammar School, to which both boys went, he told David that he

would only be allowed to take the natural science tripos at Cambridge if

could prove his worth by winning an open scholarship. He had set Dickie a

tough test too - saying he would only be allowed to become an actor if he

won the intensely sought-after Leverhulme drama scholarship at the Royal

Academy of Dramatic Art, which the boy promptly won. *

 

*It set the brothers out on career paths in which both would make

significant step changes. Richard's began in 1942 playing a deserter in the

film In Which We Serve. Over the five decades that followed he was to act in

almost 50 movies. *

 

*David too set out on a path which was to commit him for a similar period.

After a couple of years editing children's science textbooks, he joined the

BBC in 1952 as a producer in the TV Talks Department, where he was

responsible for the quiz show Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? Over the next 20

years he worked his way up the BBC hierarchy, becoming, in 1965, the first

controller of BBC2, where he commissioned an extraordinary variety of

programs - from cultural classics like Kenneth Clark's Civilisation and

Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man, though iconic comedy by Peter Cook and

Dudley Moore and The Likely Lads to Match of the Day and televised snooker.

He was then promoted to director of all BBC TV. But in 1972, just as he was

being widely tipped to be the next director general, he quit to return to

program-making. *

 

*His big brother had made his own transition. Whilst never entirely

abandoning acting, Richard moved first into production with projects like

the 1961 classic Whistle Down the Wind and then, in 1969, he made his first

film as director, Oh! What a Lovely War. It launched a career of which the

highlights include Young Winston (1972), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Gandhi

(1982), A Chorus Line (1985) and Cry Freedom (1987). Ghandi earned him an

Oscar as best director. *

 

*David launched himself into pioneering an new style of nature programme,

writing and presenting nine major series. For eight years he narrated BBC1's

half-hour nature series Wildlife on One. His 13-part 1979 series Life on

Earth was seen by 500million people worldwide. It set a pattern for what was

to follow: The Living Planet, Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives, The Private Life

of Plants, The Lost Gods of Easter Island, The Song of the Earth and The

Blue Planet. This year Planet Earth was the first natural history series to

be made in high-definition format. The series produced some of TV's defining

moments, such as the mountain gorillas who joined David as he was filming in

the jungle and began ruffling his hair, clambering over him and untying his

shoes, like children playing. *

 

*But there was something else their apparently different careers had in

common. Richard Attenborough put his finger on the root of it recently. " My

parents were radicals, " he wrote. " In the late 1930s, my father chaired a

committee devoted to bringing Jewish refugees out of Hitler's Germany. In

most of the cases it meant housing them for a few days while their papers

were put in order to go to relatives in the United States or Canada. *

 

* " One day my mother went up to London to fetch two German girls, Irene, aged

12, and Helga, nine. But while they were with us, war broke out, ending all

transport to America. " *

 

*He and David and Johnny came back from school one day and were told to see

their parents in their father's study. " My father explained that Irene and

Helga were stranded and there was nowhere for them to go. Their mother was

in a concentration camp, and their father likely to be. " The boys' parents

wanted to ask their children whether they would agree to adopt the girls. *

 

*It would strain the family finances and holidays and other treats would

have to be reduced. " My parents both said: 'This is what we would like, but

we won't do it without the agreement of you boys, because they are going to

become your sisters'. " *

 

*Compassion, their parents taught them, wasn't a theory. " From the age of 14

on, I have always believed that no man can live as an island. I know that in

the movies I direct, I want to make a cry for compassion and a plea for

tolerance. I suppose the most obvious example is Cry Freedom, an

anti-apartheid movie about South Africa. If I had not had the beginning I

did, if I had not known Irene and Helga, I doubt that I would have had the

passion and the determination to demonstrate these feelings through my

work. " *

 

*There is a high moral intuition at the core of David's vision too. *

 

*In his early years he was criticised by some environmentalists for giving a

false picture of idyllic wilderness and minimising the threat posed to it by

rapacious humans. But as the years have passed a sense of judgement and of

indignation has encroached. He has spoken out against the longline fishing

boats that kill albatrosses. He has backed campaigns to have Borneo's

rainforest declared a protected area. Most recently he has become a

proselytiser for action on climate change, which he describes as " the major

challenge facing the world " . George Bush, he has said, venturing untypically

into politics, is the top " environmental villain " of our age. *

 

* " The future of life on earth depends on our ability to take action, " he

says. " Many individuals are doing what they can, but real success can only

come if there's a change in our societies and our economics and in our

politics. " *

 

*Both men have been showered with honours through their long careers - TV

and film awards, academic honours like the one conferred in Leicester, and

state honours - both have CBEs and knighthoods and where Richard has a life

peerage, David is a member of the exclusive Order of Merit, to which the

Queen appoints only 24 members. Both hold long-lists of honorary and

charitable posts; Richard at the British Academy of Film and Television

Arts, RADA and many more; David at the British Museum, Kew Gardens and the

Royal Society for Nature Conservation. *

 

*Old age has led them into affectionate parodies of themselves. David's posh

tones of hushed boyish enthusiasm are a routine targets for mimics and

comedians. Richard's luvvie manners have reached the point of caricature:

" At my age the only problem is with remembering names. When I call everyone

darling, it has damn all to do with passionately adoring them, but I know

I'm safe calling them that. Although, of course, I adore them too. " *

 

*Their latter years have also brought personal tragedy. David's wife of 47

years, Jane, died in 1997 and Richard lost his elder daughter and

granddaughter in the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. Through it all the two

men have remained close friends and neighbours - one on Richmond Hill, the

other on Richmond Green - who see each other often. *

 

*Both share a horror of retirement. " The thought, " says Dickie, " is anathema

to me. I can't imagine anything worse. " *

 

*As for his younger brother, David spent his 80th birthday in May back on

the Galapagos islands filming his 10th major series, this time of the lives

of amphibians and reptiles. His camera was trained on the island's giant

tortoises, the most famous of whom - Lonesome George - is about the same age

as himself. For all we know, the great beast may have an older brother. *

 

*- The Independent*