Copyright © 2011 Pamela Jane Smith

PHOTOS

A celebratory afternoon tea with Sir David Attenborough, attended by hundreds, was held at the the University of Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Downing Street, Cambridge, UK

“Tea”

Helen Geake from the British television programme, 'Time Team' talks with Mike Pitts, who is the Editor of the popular journal, British Archaeology, and with Mick Aston, Professor at Bristol University, well-known from ‘Time Team’.

Sir David Attenborough talks to the Director of the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Nicholas Thomas; behind are Sir David's daughter, Susan Attenborough, Sir Mortimer Wheeler's granddaughter, Carol Pettman, and a Personal-Histories volunteer, Jennifer Bates.

“Talk”

Martin Carver, editor of Antiquity, on stage, in the Babbage Lecture Theatre, before Sir David begins to talk at 4pm.

"What a starry collection of diggers, if the roof had fallen, in there wouldn't have been a site director left in the country," Maev Kennedy, archaeology correspondent for the Guardian newspaper, commenting on the illustrious audience on 12th October 2009.

“Panel”

Sir David introduces co-panellists David Collison, Anna Benson Gyles, seen in the middle, and Ray Sutcliffe on your right. Collison is one of the acclaimed BBC directors of the television programme, “Chronicle” which ran for 25 years attracting large audiences. David Attenborough, Anna Benson Gyles and David Collison also worked on the popular “Tribal Eye” and as Controller of BBC2, Sir David commissioned programmes such as 'The World About Us' and “Civilisation” which led to 'The Ascent of Man'. BBC2 was a network, as Sir David writes in Life on Air, that appealed “to all levels of brow”.

"Archaeology was evolving just as we were evolving with the techniques and methods of filming and recording. It changed before our eyes and before our cameras," BBC Producer, Ray Sutcliffe, expert in filming the then new fields of industrial and maritime archaeology.

David Collison (BBC Producer): "One of the things that Paul did in 1965, when he first was offered the editorship of the History & Archaeology Unit and its flagship "Chronicle", was to ensure that his principal adviser would be Professor Glyn Daniel. Now Glyn was the Editor of Antiquity which meant that he had a limitless supply of contacts and stories. Also, having spent the '50s as a television star himself, he knew what worked. When Colin Renfrew and I made a film about the megalith builders together, it came about because Glyn rang Paul Johnstone and said, 'I've just been up to Sheffield University to listen to a young lecturer there and he's trying to re-date the entire prehistory of the world. So, I think perhaps you should have a word with him." [audience laughter]

Sir David: And, there we are! Thank you. (LOUD applause, prolonged applause)

VIDEOS

CREDITS

HOME