David Attenborough views Birds Drawn for John Gould by Edward Lear
22 Video Views·Mar 27, 2025
The Folio Society presents a facsimile of David Attenborough's personal, complete collection of 19th-century bird plates drawn for John Gould by the great Edward Lear.
David Attenborough first saw one of Lear’s plates in the 1950s, and was so struck by its precision and grace that he determined to collect them all. When the collection was complete, he had them bound in an original 19th-century leather binding case.
To celebrate the bicentenary of Lear’s birth, Attenborough has kindly allowed us to reproduce the entire volume in facsimile. He has also written a superb introduction, especially for this limited edition, and signed each of the 780 copies.
Here David discusses his collection and the edition with The Folio Society's Joe Whitlock Blundell.
The Folio Society produces beautifully crafted collector’s editions of the world’s greatest books, each with unique illustrations or specially researched photographs throughout.
Bodoni.
As per the original, as per your copy.
Oh, that's very handsome.
This seems to be exactly the tooling of mine.
It is.
Yes, we copied it precisely.
Did you find the original?
We had them redrawn.
We got an artist to redraw them from your book.
We enlarged them about 5,000% and then had them redrawn, front and back, and on the edges
of the boards.
Oh, in the nice line there.
And on the inside, around the marble.
And it's just a marbling, or is it just a photographic reproduction of the marble?
No, it's hand marbled.
So no two are the same?
No two are the same.
And it's Turkish spot design, which is the same design as on your book.
That's the name of the marbling?
Yes.
I didn't know marbling had names.
Yes, the different designs have names.
But they aren't designed, really.
They're just done with oil.
But some have got combs in them, and some of them have got spiky patterns, and some
of them have got wave patterns.
And this is a spot.
Look, you signed it.
I did.
I should have done a different colour, and then you'd be quite sure it wasn't a reproduction.
Oh no, that wouldn't be beyond you anyway.
Well, that I took a lot of trouble over, to get that right.
And I think it's a nice title.
It's beautiful.
It's exactly in the spirit of the originals.
And then we've copied yours, except of course for adding you, because you didn't put yourself
on, did you?
No, I did.
I put myself rather tastefully in the back there, in about three points.
Gosh, that's a very good, rich blue, brown, isn't it?
Well, the difficulty in the reproduction, of course, was holding all the detail in these
dark areas, but also keeping these incredibly faint watercolour washes.
Because they almost, they either disappear in reproduction, or they get too strong.
Yes.
Quite hard to hold them at the right value.
And, of course, all the copies are different, because the originals are hand-done.
All the originals are different, yes.
They are good, you know, aren't they?
I mean, that is such a nice portrait.
It's got a rather plaintive expression.
Yes.
You're very good on feet, William Deere.
Oh, it's very nice, I must say.
Oh, now you see, these are the ones.
These are the ones.
I think that, arguably, the eagle owl, is probably the one, really.
And as a bird portrait, difficult to improve on.
Presumably, you've met eagle owls in real life.
I've seen them.
They're huge, you know.
Are they bigger than that print?
About the size.
About that size.
About that size, I'd say.
About that size.
You wouldn't want to tussle with one.
No, they're very powerful birds.
It's a terrific picture.
And, of course, eagle owls have been drawn throughout the 19th century
by all sorts of naturalists and naturalist artists.
You've only got to go and look at some of the other ones
to see how superlative this is.
It really has majesty.
Let's look at some of the tropical ones.
Now, that's the answer.
Actually, you see, it's better because my particular,
my copy of that is actually a little torn.
Yes, I seem to remember it was a little bit torn.
We've just tidied things up here and there where we needed to.
And as you'll have noticed, the captions have all been reset
because quite a few of the originals are broken.
Were they?
No, because they're engraved.
But they've been reset in exactly the same style.
I'm just going to try to go to some.
There we are, the toucans.
Yeah.
That's a cracking picture, isn't it?
Wonderful colours.
You had a rather good phrase about the toucans in your introduction,
something about the malevolent glare.
Yes, well, they are.
I mean, you start off by thinking that they're sort of comic.
But when you see them raiding the nests of another bird
and taking out the nestings, you know these are...
That's the one you were talking about.
That's the one, yeah.
You see, and he's got his wings raised, slightly threatening.
And the beak has a function apart from just being...
It's very, very lightweight, very lightweight, yeah.
It's full of...
Well, not full, it's all empty, as it were,
but it's got a very fine honeycomb.
But apart from anything else, it's species-specific.
I mean, it's one of the ways that the birds recognise their own kind,
their own mates.
But they're not front-heavy, as you might suppose.
I congratulate you. I think it looks lovely.