Attenborough at 100: a World of Animals

Available for 27 days

As David Attenborough's 100th birthday approaches, Hugh Bonneville and Anne-Marie Duff read poetry and prose inspired by animals: from sloths, hawks and crocodiles, to wolves, elephants and snakes, alongside an archive recording of Attenborough himself reading from Life Stories, his memoir of seventy years of world-class nature broadcasting. We'll visit all seven continents in readings from Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park to Isabel Allende’s Paradise to Kari Herbert’s Antarctica, and hear poetry from Lorca to AA Milne and Pascale Petit. Music inspired by and evoking all manner of creatures and plants, includes pieces by Camille Saint-Saens, Claude Debussy and Elena Kats-Chernin and George Fenton's scores for Attenborough's nature documentaries. In Memoriam (extract) by Alfred Tennyson H is for Hawk by Helen McDonald Life Stories – archaeopteryx by David Attenborough Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton Life Stories – sloths by David Attenborough Sonnet on a Monkey by Marjory Fleming Crocodile by Thomas Lovell Beddoes Leaving Times by Jodi Piccoult The Old Lizard (extract) by Federico Garcia Lorca The Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor The Overstory by Richard Powers Life Stories – monstrous flowers by David Attenborough Animal, Vegetable, Mineral by Barbara Kingsolver Song of Myself (extract) by Walt Whitman Between Us And by Anne Carson White Fang by Jack London The Pangolin by Fleur Adcock Life Stories – coelocanth by David Attenborough Blueback by Tim Winton The Explorer's Daughter by Kari Herbert At the Zoo by AA Milne Paradise by Isabel Allende Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban Kindness to Animals by Wendy Cope A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth The Tyger (extract) by William Blake The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling Green Bee Eater by Pascale Petit Produced in Salford by Olive Clancy