history,

The process of making natural history films is to try to prevent the animal knowing you are there, so you get glimpses of a non-human world, and that is a transporting thing.

Natural history is not about producing fables.

If I were beginning my career today, I don’t think I would take the same direction. Television is at a crossroads at the moment. And although I am not up to date technologically, I suspect that somewhere out there people are conveying things about natural history by means other than television, and I think if I were beginning today, I’d be there.

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.

In the old days… it was a basic, cardinal fact that producers didn’t have opinions. When I was producing natural history programmes, I didn’t use them as vehicles for my own opinion. They were factual programmes.

Cameramen are among the most extraordinarily able and competent people I know. They have to have an insight into natural history that gives them a sixth sense of what the creature is going to do, so they can be ready to follow.

You can only get really unpopular decisions through if the electorate is convinced of the value of the environment. That’s what natural history programmes should be for.