David Attenborough's 100th: The Royal Albert Hall Birthday Show
Tomorrow, Friday 8 May, Sir David Attenborough turns 100, and the celebrations will be centred a short walk from Knightsbridge. The BBC is staging David Attenborough's 100 Years on Planet Earth, a live birthday show at the Royal Albert Hall, broadcast from 8.30pm on BBC One and iPlayer. For South Kensington, home to the Natural History Museum and so much of Britain's love affair with the natural world, it is a fitting place for the party.
What the show will include
Kirsty Young will host, joined on stage by people who have worked with Attenborough or been inspired by him, including Sir Michael Palin, Liz Bonnin, Steve Backshall and Chris Packham. The evening mixes the BBC's natural history archive with live music, and the BBC Concert Orchestra will play scores from some of the most memorable moments in his programmes, including the iguana and racer snake chase from Planet Earth II.
The music
- Sigur Rós will perform Hoppípolla, the song that became forever linked with Planet Earth.
- Dan Smith of Bastille will sing a classical version of Pompeii with the orchestra; the track was used in Planet Earth III.
- Sienna Spiro will perform Pajaro Campana with the Paraguayan harpist Francisco Yglesias, a piece that featured in Attenborough's first wildlife series, Zoo Quest.
The show is produced by BBC Studios Music Productions and the Natural History Unit, in partnership with The Open University. NME has the full list of performers, and Discover Wildlife has a preview of the evening.
A week of Attenborough
The live show is the centrepiece of a wider BBC celebration. Look out for Making Life on Earth: Attenborough's Greatest Adventure, which revisits the 1979 series with new interviews, and Secret Garden, a new series about the hidden stories in Britain's gardens.
Marking the day locally
If you were not lucky enough to get a ticket for the Hall, the neighbourhood still offers a fitting way to celebrate. The Natural History Museum on Cromwell Road is free to enter and makes the obvious pilgrimage, with its galleries telling the story of life on Earth that Attenborough spent a career bringing into our living rooms. A walk through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens on a May afternoon, with the trees in full new leaf, is a quieter tribute of its own.
For those watching at home, the show starts at 8.30pm, so an early supper in Knightsbridge leaves plenty of time to settle in.
Getting there
The Royal Albert Hall is on Kensington Gore, SW7, about ten minutes from South Kensington station and twenty minutes on foot from Knightsbridge. Expect heavy crowds around the Hall on Friday evening, so allow extra time if you are heading to the show, and consider walking rather than relying on a taxi afterwards. See our guides to the Royal Albert Hall and the Natural History Museum.
Lead image: Photograph by Allan Warren Derivative by Keraunoscopia via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
