📍College House, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK
1932 – 1945“David Attenborough was born in Isleworth, west London, in May 1926, and in 1932, when he was six, his family moved to Leicester, where his father, Frederick, had been appointed principal of University College Leicester. The family lived in College House, on the campus of the young college, which occupied the buildings of a former Victorian lunatic asylum; the old corridors, outbuildings and grounds made a wonderful playground for David and his brothers, Richard, the eldest, who became an actor and film director, and John, the youngest. His parents were warm, liberal and intellectual, and their home was full of books, music and debate. During the Second World War they fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Germany. David was fascinated by the natural world from the start: he collected fossils, stones, birds' eggs and other specimens, and by seven he had his own little museum, which the young archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes admired. He cycled out into the Leicestershire countryside to hunt for fossils in the quarries, and once sold newts to the university's zoology department. He went to Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys, which backed onto the college grounds, and in 1945 he won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge, to study natural sciences. After national service in the Navy, he joined the BBC in 1952 and went on to make Zoo Quest, Life on Earth, The Blue Planet and Planet Earth, becoming the world's best-loved natural history broadcaster. In 2026, for his hundredth birthday, the University of Leicester celebrated the boy who grew up on its campus.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today