Christopher Parsons
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Christopher Parsons
Christopher Eugene Parsons OBE (23. August 1932 in Winchester, Hampshire – 8 November 2002 in Littleton-upon-Severn, Gloucestershire) was an English wildlife film-maker and the executive producer of David Attenborough's ''Life on Earth'', widely regarded as one of the finest and most influential of nature documentaries. As a founding member and a former Head of the BBC Natural History Unit, he worked on many of its early productions and published a history of its first 25 years in 1982. Besides television, he was also passionate about projects which helped to bring an understanding of the natural world to a wider audience, notably the Wildscreen Festival and ARKive. Film-making career After obtaining a degree in science from the University College of the South West of England, Exeter, Christopher Parsons joined the BBC in 1955. He began as an apprentice film editor at the newly formed West Region Film Unit in Bristol, England. Here, he worked on a wide range of programmes in ...
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Officer Of The Order Of The British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established on 4 June 1917 by King George V and comprises five classes across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two of which make the recipient either a knight if male or dame if female. There is also the related British Empire Medal, whose recipients are affiliated with, but not members of, the order. Recommendations for appointments to the Order of the British Empire were originally made on the nomination of the United Kingdom, the self-governing Dominions of the Empire (later Commonwealth) and the Viceroy of India. Nominations continue today from Commonwealth countries that participate in recommending British honours. Most Commonwealth countries ceased recommendations for appointments to the Order of the British Empire when they cre ...
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Exeter
Exeter () is a city in Devon, South West England. It is situated on the River Exe, approximately northeast of Plymouth and southwest of Bristol. In Roman Britain, Exeter was established as the base of Legio II Augusta under the personal command of Vespasian. Exeter became a religious centre in the Middle Ages. Exeter Cathedral, founded in the mid 11th century, became Anglican in the 16th-century English Reformation. Exeter became an affluent centre for the wool trade, although by the First World War the city was in decline. After the Second World War, much of the city centre was rebuilt and is now a centre for education, business and tourism in Devon and Cornwall. It is home to two of the constituent campuses of the University of Exeter: Streatham and St Luke's. The administrative area of Exeter has the status of a non-metropolitan district under the administration of the County Council. It is the county town of Devon and home to the headquarters of Devon County Council. A p ...
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Natural World (BBC TV Series)
''Natural World'' is a strand of British wildlife documentary programmes broadcast on BBC Two and BBC Two HD and regarded by the BBC as its flagship natural history series. It is the longest-running documentary in its genre on British television, with nearly 500 episodes broadcast since its inception in 1983. ''Natural World'' programmes are typically one-off films that take an in-depth look at particular natural history events, stories or subjects from around the globe. ''Natural World'' is produced by the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol under the stewardship of the Series Editor, who is responsible for commissioning or acquiring content. Programmes are a mixture of in-house productions, collaborative productions with other broadcasters or acquisitions from independent producers. There are 10 programmes broadcast each year, of which approximately half are produced in-house. The series has close ties with the US series ''Nature'', broadcast by PBS. History ''Natural World' ...
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BBC Two
BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio channels, it is funded by the television licence, and is therefore free of commercial advertising. It is a comparatively well-funded public-service network, regularly attaining a much higher audience share than most public-service networks worldwide. Originally styled BBC2, it was the third British television station to be launched (starting on 21 April 1964), and from 1 July 1967, Europe's first television channel to broadcast regularly in colour. It was envisaged as a home for less mainstream and more ambitious programming, and while this tendency has continued to date, most special-interest programmes of a kind previously broadcast on BBC Two, for example the BBC Proms, no ...
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Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierra Leone has a tropical climate, with diverse environments ranging from savanna to rainforests. The country has a population of 7,092,113 as of the 2015 census. The capital and largest city is Freetown. The country is divided into five administrative regions, which are subdivided into Districts of Sierra Leone, 16 districts. Sierra Leone is a constitutional republic with a unicameral parliament and a directly elected executive president, president serving a five-year term with a maximum of two terms. The current president is Julius Maada Bio. Sierra Leone is a Secular state, secular nation with Constitution of Sierra Leone, the constitution providing for the separation of state and religion and freedom of conscience (which includes freedom of ...
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Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils. It is a Megadiverse countries, megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with Deserts of Australia, deserts in the centre, tropical Forests of Australia, rainforests in the north-east, and List of mountains in Australia, mountain ranges in the south-east. The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south east Asia approximately Early human migrations#Nearby Oceania, 65,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Period, last i ...
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Gerald Durrell
Gerald Malcolm Durrell, (7 January 1925 – 30 January 1995) was a British naturalist, writer, zookeeper, conservationist, and television presenter. He founded the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Jersey Zoo on the Channel Island of Jersey in 1959. He wrote approximately forty books, mainly about his life as an animal collector and enthusiast, the most famous being ''My Family and Other Animals'' (1956). Those memoirs of his family's years living in Greece were adapted into two television series (''My Family and Other Animals'', 1987, and ''The Durrells'', 2016–2019) and one television film (''My Family and Other Animals'', 2005). He was the youngest brother of novelist Lawrence Durrell. Early life and education Durrell was born in Jamshedpur, British India, on 7 January 1925. He was the fifth and youngest child (an elder sister having died in infancy) of Louisa Florence Dixie and Lawrence Samuel Durrell, both of whom were born in India of English and Irish ...
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The Major
''The Major'' is the first BBC natural history documentary film to be made in colour, though it was originally screened, in 1963, in black and white, as colour television broadcasts did not begin in the United Kingdom until 1967. After that it became one of the BBC Natural History Unit's most repeated shows. It describes the felling of an eponymous, three-century-old, oak tree, which has become considered a hazard to traffic, and the effect that that has on the wildlife that lives in it, and on the fictionalised English village in which it grew. Actor Paul Rogers narrated a script by Desmond Hawkins. Filming was by Eric Ashby and Leslie Jackman, the latter filming the insect scenes at his home in Paignton. The 35-minute film was produced by Christopher Parsons. The music was composed and conducted by George Shears and performed by the BBC's West of England Players. Although the tree was in the Forest of Dean, filming of the "nearby" village was actually done at Eastcombe in t ...
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Tony Soper
Tony Soper (born 10 January 1929) is a British naturalist, author and broadcaster. Life and career Soper was educated at Hyde Park Elementary School and at Devonport High School for Boys, both in Plymouth. He joined the BBC at 17 as a "youth-in-training", subsequently graduating by way of studio manager to features producer in radio, then moved into television. Among the radio programmes he produced were ''Birds In Britain''. Soper co-founded the BBC's Natural History Unit as its first film producer, with Patrick Beech the then South West Controller. Cutting his teeth on the ''LOOK'' series he organised far-flung wildlife filming projects. He presented live television programmes, including ''Birdwatch'', ''Birdspot'', ''Discovering Birds'', ''Discovering Animals'', ''Beside the Sea'', ''Wildtrack'' and ''Nature''. Soper also co-presented '' Animal Magic'' with Johnny Morris for a few years in the 1960s. For many years he also had a regular column in the RSPB members' magazine. ...
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Peter Scott
Sir Peter Markham Scott, (14 September 1909 – 29 August 1989) was a British ornithologist, conservationist, painter, naval officer, broadcaster and sportsman. The only child of Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott, he took an interest in observing and shooting wildfowl at a young age and later took to their breeding. He established the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust in Slimbridge in 1946 and helped found the World Wide Fund for Nature, the logo of which he designed. He was a yachting enthusiast from an early age and took up gliding in mid-life. He was part of the UK team for the 1936 Summer Olympics and won a bronze medal in sailing. He was knighted in 1973 for his work in conservation of wild animals and was also a recipient of the WWF Gold Medal and the J. Paul Getty Prize. Early life Scott was born in London at 174, Buckingham Palace Road, the only child of Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott and sculptor Kathleen Bruce. He was only two years old when his father died. ...
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Television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, entertainment, news, and sports. Television became available in crude experimental forms in the late 1920s, but only after several years of further development was the new technology marketed to consumers. After World War II, an improved form of black-and-white television broadcasting became popular in the United Kingdom and the United States, and television sets became commonplace in homes, businesses, and institutions. During the 1950s, television was the primary medium for influencing public opinion.Diggs-Brown, Barbara (2011''Strategic Public Relations: Audience Focused Practice''p. 48 In the mid-1960s, color broadcasting was introduced in the U.S. and most other developed countries. The availability of various types of archival st ...
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