Nancy Banks-Smith - in praise of
Nancy Banks-Smith is one of The Guardian newspaper’s TV critics. Her writing is wonderful - she has style. A great turn of phrase. She’s the one writer I’ll always read - even if her subject looks unpromising - because there’s nearly always poetry / and or insight. Oxygenating joy!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/mar/03/television.wildlife
Here she is on David Attenborough’s retirement:
“David Attenborough was chasing a giant anteater on the South American savannah. It jinked and sprinted, showing, for a hefty beast, a nifty turn of speed. He followed like a schoolboy in shorts, helpless with laughter. It was the blissful spring of television.
“Zoo Quest was the first programme to show wild animals in the wild and the oxygenating joy of that moment I shall always remember. I remembered it when I saw, with a sympathetic twinge, how stiffly he walked at 81 in Life in Cold Blood. We are stiffer and wiser than we were. Today he would sit down beside a giant anteater and ask, in that mimicable murmur, how it was feeling. And it would reply: “Endangered.” “
Add comment March 4, 2008
