The son of a fish-paste factory manager in London’s East End, Alan Root fell in love with ornithology as a Blitz evacuee when he first clapped eyes on the pea-sized egg of a goldcrest, England’s smallest bird. After the war his father got a job manufacturing bully-beef in Kenya, where Root discovered a much richer diversity of birds. While still at school he began recording birdsong and then shot 8mm home movies of the snakes he collected.
Root makes his rise to becoming the world’s greatest wildlife film-maker seem eccentric and easy. A lucky break started him working for Armand Denis, producer of the early TV series On Safari. On a flooded bridge over Uganda’s Ntungwe River a man from Anglia Television interviewed him like this: ‘Would you like the job?’ ‘I’d love it.’ ‘Splendid! Welcome to Survival.’
He knew Joy and George Adamson, the Leakeys, David Attenborough, Bernhard and Michael Grzimek — with whom he made the Oscar-winning film Serengeti Shall Not Die.
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