“You should have smashed it into a hundred pieces first, and then glued it back together!” laughed Sir David Attenborough when we visited him at home in London.

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We had just given Sir David a specially customised Easter egg – made from palm-oil-free chocolate, naturally.

Our gift’s alternative packaging refers to the 2011 programme Attenborough and the Giant Egg, in which the presenter went to Madagascar to search for the huge eggs of extinct elephant birds.

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Pieces of these ancient eggshells still litter the sandy ground in some parts of the island, and Sir David also has one of the massive eggs in his own private collection.

The reconstructed egg is currently on view at London’s Horniman Museum.

BBC Wildlife Magazine visited the London home of Sir David to chat about his long and glittering career.

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All images © Tom Gilks/BBC Wildlife

Authors

Ben HoareScience writer and author, and editorial consultant, BBC Wildlife

Ben Hoare is a wildlife writer and editor, and proud to be an all-round ‘nature nerd’. He was features editor at BBC Wildlife magazine from 2008 to 2018, and after that its editorial consultant. Ben writes about seasonal natural-history highlights in every issue of the magazine, and also contributes longer conservation stories. His latest children’s book is 'Wild City', published in October 2020.

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