There are times when our national passion for cutting people down to size is a little tiring. I left Brett Morgen’s new documentary about Jane Goodall, the chimpanzee expert, in a rare flush of excited enthusiasm. ‘You’ve got to see it!’ I said to everyone. Most replied along these lines: ‘Goodall, didn’t she turn out to be a fraud?’ Or: ‘Wasn’t it all Leakey’s work she took credit for?’
‘Yeah, what’s with that?’ says Brett Morgen hunched over his toast in a very hipster Soho hotel. ‘In the Times of London today, in the review, it says Jane can’t hold a candle to David Attenborough. I’m like, he’s a fucking TV presenter! Jane’s contribution to humankind… I don’t even know how to measure it! What woman of the past 100 years could she be measured against?’
We both shake our heads in disbelief. But Morgen’s right: Jane was and is remarkable. In the summer of 1960, just 26, she went off to live in the Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania.
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