Love Stories: The tragic end to Sir David Attenborough's 47-year marriage
By Maddison Leach|
To most people Sir David Attenborough, who turns 98 this year, is the soothing narrator of their favourite nature documentaries, a beloved voice that has educated them for decades.
Behind that voice is a very real man whose passion for conservation is rivalled only by his love of the natural world.
But while nature may have been his first love, it wasn't his only love.Attenborough's other great love was his wife of almost 50 years, Jane, whose tragedy left him "lost".
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Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel
Not much is known about when or where David Attenborough met his wife, Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel, but the pair were very much in love when they married in 1950.
Attenborough was 24 at the time, while Oriel is believed to have been around 23 when she said "I do".
Originally from Merthyr Tydfil, a small Welsh town 37km north of the capital, Cardiff, Oriel moved with Attenborough to a home in Richmond Upon Thames in London.
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There they welcomed two children, Robert and Susan, and built a life together as husband and wife, as well as parents.
Married life
As a married man in the 50s, 60s and into the 70s, Attenborough was expected to fill a very particular role as the head of the home and family.
But with his work taking him away for months at a time, he often wasn't around, meaning much of the responsibility fell to Oriel.
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It's a dynamic the broadcaster has since admitted he regrets playing into, saying he missed "irreplaceable" family moments and experiences.
"If I do have regrets, it is that when my children were the same age as your children, I was away for three months at a time," he told documentary maker Louis Theroux on the Radio Times?in 2017.
"If you have a child of six or eight and you miss three months of his or her life, it's irreplaceable; you miss something."
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His children, Susan and Robert, are both in their 60s now and have turned their father's absence into a running family joke over the past decades.
"There used to be family jokes," Attenborough added. "You know, 'You were never there. You don't remember that, Father, do you, because you weren't there!'"
Though he was often away from the family, there's no evidence he and Oriel were ever anything other than a happily married pair.
They raised their children into bright adults and, for all intents and purposes, the pair should have had a "happily ever after" together.
But real life doesn't always work that way.
Tragedy strikes
Attenborough and Oriel were married for 47 years, and likely would have remained together many more, when tragedy struck in 1997.
While filming his documentary The Life of the Birds in New Zealand, Attenborough got the terrible news that his beloved wife had collapsed.
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Aged 70 at the time, Oriel had suffered a brain haemorrhage and had little chance of survival.
Attenborough rushed to her side, where he remained for the short time until she passed.
Writing of his wife's final moments in his 2010 memoir Life On Air, Attenborough remembered wondering if she'd respond in any way when he held her hand for the last time.
"She did, and gave my hand a squeeze. The focus of my life, the anchor had gone¡ now I was lost," Attenborough said.
"The focus of my life, the anchor had gone¡ now I was lost."
The grief of her loss was incredible, and in 2009 the natural historian confessed that he still lived in the London home he and Oriel had raised their children in.
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"This house is all bound up with her. I feel her here as much as anywhere," the Express quoted him as saying.
"The thing is, when you go around the house, you know that, no matter how many doors you open, there is not going to be anybody there, and that's a pity."
He took time off from his broadcasting and filming work after Oriel's death, but later confessed that returning to his work helped him cope with her loss.
Attenborough's passion has always been for the natural world, and since his wife's death more than two decades ago now, he has remained dedicated to that passion.
But we're sure there's still a part of his heart that belongs only to the woman he loved.
