David Attenborough’s private grief: The loss he rarely speaks about as he turns 100
His personal struggle.
Sir David Attenborough has spent a century making sense of the natural world for the rest of us.
But as he turns 100, it’s worth touching on the part of his life he has never spoken about much – the loss of his wife, and how he has carried it ever since.
In 1950, David Attenborough married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel.
While her husband became one of the most recognised voices on television, Jane chose a life away from the attention, devoting her time to charitable work and keeping largely out of the public eye.
Tragically, Jane died in 1997, aged 70, from a brain haemorrhage. They were together for 47 years and David never remarried.
When Jane fell ill, David was working in New Zealand. He dropped everything and travelled back as quickly as he could, desperate to be by her side – only to arrive and find her already in a coma.
A doctor encouraged him to hold her hand, and she squeezed it back.
Writing about the moment in his memoir, he shared: “The focus of my life, the anchor had gone. Now I was lost.”
In the years that followed, David continued to work – and has since acknowledged that was how he coped.
“I coped by working,” he said in a 2009 interview. “It was the most fantastic luck that I was able to work.”
Sir David and Jane had two children, Robert and Susan.
Robert went into academia, becoming a senior lecturer in bioanthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra. Susan, a former primary school principal, now works closely with her father.
Both have tended to keep their private lives just that – private.
Today, Sir David lives in Richmond – a quiet, leafy part of southwest London beside the Thames, close to Kew Gardens and Richmond Park. He has described it as his favourite place on earth.
