\n<\/p>\n
Sir David Attenborough has spent more than seven decades bringing the natural world into people\u2019s living rooms. As the face and voice of landmark BBC<\/a> series like Life on Earth, The Blue Planet, and Planet Earth, he\u2019s inspired generations to care about animals, conservation and the climate.<\/p>\n Knighted in 1985 and later appointed a Companion of Honour, he\u2019s also won multiple BAFTAs\u2014including for programmes shot in black and white, colour, HD, 3D and 4K.<\/p>\n But when he\u2019s not charting the lives of whales or trekking through the jungle, Attenborough is a voracious reader with a fondness for practical knowledge.<\/p>\n In 2012, while talking to host Kirsty Young on BBC Radio 4\u2019s Desert Island Discs<\/a> – where guests are asked to list songs, a book and an essential item they would bring if they were left stranded on a desert island – he picked a title from the 1800s as the book of his life.<\/p>\n Attenborough\u2019s chosen book is Shifts and Expedients of Camp Life, a DIY book for the nineteenth-century explorer and adventurer written by W. B. Lord and T. Baines.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Attenborough justified his choice: \u201cIt\u2019s about four inches thick, and every conceivable disaster that you can think of that might happen to a traveller is there, together with a solution”.<\/p>\n “I mean, and good advice. It says things like, an unmanly fear of fever is inclined to bring on the symptoms. Good stuff, you see. But it also tells you how to use its own, to use the phrase, how to baffle an alligator\u201d.<\/p>\n