He who puts out his hand to stop the wheel of history will have his fingers crushed.

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.

Natural history is not about producing fables.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I'm inspired by history different periods.

The truth is of course that history is not completed in modern commerce any more than philosophy is perfected in political economy. In other words there is nothing timeless or God-given about filling stations and penicillin and plastic bags.