David Attenborough
Fantastic beasts
Sam Kriss on the power of paleoart
Be a self-sacrificing ant
One day the writer and artist James Bridle rented a hatchback, taped a smartphone to the steering wheel and installed…
Espouse
What do people think espouse means? It looks fairly plain, since spouses are to have and to hold, or indeed…
Natural successor
When it comes to natural history, Sir David Attenborough rules the airwaves. Pliny the Elder (d. ad 79) who, as…
Watcher of the skies – and the coffee pot
‘To be recognised and accepted by a peregrine,’ wrote J.A. Baker in 1967, ‘you must wear the same clothes, travel…
David Attenborough is making the same mistake as Greta Thunberg
It wasn’t so long ago that Sir David Attenborough came across as a calm voice of reason. His much-admired documentaries…
BBC wildlife documentaries are just a chance to tell us all off
Older readers may remember a time when landmark BBC wildlife documentary series were joyous celebrations of the miraculous fecundity of…
Nigel Farage had better hurry up and settle for a peerage
Last week, an angry Telegraph reader asked me why I had got through a whole column on Brexit without mentioning…
Why has Frankie Boyle gone so soft?
‘I spend a lot of time helping teenagers who’ve been sexually abused…’ — beat — ‘…find their way out of…
If you liked Triumph of the Will, you’ll love Our Planet
If you liked Triumph of the Will, you’ll love this latest masterpiece of the genre: Our Planet. The Netflix nature…
How does David Attenborough know what the monkeys are thinking?
The opening episode of BBC1’s Dynasties — the new Attenborough-fronted series from the Natural History Unit — introduced us to…
It’s hard to preserve the primacy of head over heart while watching this doc about refugees
Anybody who wants to maintain a strong and untroubled stance against mass migration to Europe should probably avoid BBC2’s Exodus:…
Animal attraction
Let me start this week with an admittedly hard quiz question: in 1954, how did the sudden illness of Jack…
The Spectator’s Notes
You might expect that the murder of Christians would excite particular horror in countries of Christian heritage. Yet almost the…
The Spectator’s Notes
Speaking on the Today programme on Monday, Sir David Attenborough, who wants a global agreement to control carbon emissions, pointed…
Songs of praise for the BBC
In a ‘Dear Bill’ letter in Private Eye, an imaginary Denis Thatcher wrote off the BBC as a nest of…
Diary
My surgery has been calling in all those over 75 for a special session with their doctor — a sort…
