their size yet endearing for their age and patience. He also reminds me of the Queen. Like her, Attenborough is a living, breathing archive of national life. Long fossilised himself in the country’s affections, he is an almost unchanging fixture, a permanent source of reverence in an increasingly undeferential society. Like the Queen he has endured grief (the death of his wife in 1997) with quiet dignity, and like her he is an adored public figure who is unknowable. He and the Queen were born 17 days apart in 1926, and their lives have collided now and then. For seven years, in his role as a BBC executive, he produced the Queen’s Christmas message. She gave him a CBE, a knighthood, a CVO and an OM, in that order. She is not, as far as we know, thinking of retirement. Neither, needless to say, is he.