NAT Extraordinary Award for a Professional Career 2018
David Attenborough
London, 1926
For the last 60 years, David Attenborough has been one of the world’s leading natural history filmmakers, making landmark series including Life on Earth, Blue Planet and Planet Earth, seen by billions of people across the planet. His career has spanned black and white, colour, HD and 3D formats and his films have won multiple Emmys and British Academy (BAFTA) awards. David was knighted by the Queen in 1985 and was given Britain’s highest honour, the Order of Merit. He has also received numerous other awards and is a Fellow of the Royal Society. David’s films continue to push the boundaries of camera technology and CGI in factual storytelling. His latest ambitious multimedia projects include both apps and virtual reality (VR) which both entertain and educate global audiences of all ages.
David joined the BBC in 1952 and in 1954 began his acclaimed Zoo Quest series. By 1965, he was Controller of BBC Two and responsible for the introduction of colour television into Britain. In 1973, he left BBC senior management to return to programme-making. The internationally acclaimed, thirteen-part series Life On Earth was the most ambitious series that had ever been produced by the BBC’s Natural History Unit, and created the famous ‘landmark’ format that continues to make the Natural History Unit world renowned to this day.
Throughout the 1990s, David presented natural history series to huge global audiences, including Life in the Freezer (1993), The Private Life of Plants (1995), and The Life of Birds (1998). In autumn 2000, David presented State Of The Planet and a year later The Blue Planet. In 2002, he presented the immensely popular Life of Mammals, followed by Life in the Undergrowth and Life in Cold Blood. In 2006, he narrated the much celebrated blue-chip series, Planet Earth, followed by Frozen Planet (2011), Africa (2013) and Life Story (2014). In 2016 he made two award winning specials: Light On Earth and Attenborough’s Giant Dinosaur and presented the four time BAFTA and two time Emmy award-winning series Planet Earth II. Last year, Sir David presented Blue Planet II, and later this year will present the landmark series Dynasty.