Richard Attenborough is living proof that chronology is no guide to spiritual age.

This unlikely octogenarian doesn’t just achieve the work-load of a man half his age, but rather of four men half his age. Nor does he conform to the purely decorative role generally associated with the Great and the Good. Every one of the institutions or causes of which he is patron or president or chairman gets his total dedication, whether it is an obscure animal charity or the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, which he has guided to new glories.

Currently he is heading the Dragon International Project, which will create the United Kingdom’s biggest-ever film studio complex, and incidentally revive an entire community in Wales. And meanwhile he is full of plans for future films, and always ready to take on an acting role.
Although he may appear a pillar of the establishment, the heritage of a family of intense radical and humanist beliefs means that he is always ready to fight that establishment wherever he sees it guilty of prejudice or intolerance or inhumanity.

The public life is so full and so prominent that it is easy to lose sight of the intensely, unstoppable creative artist. A career in acting that covers more than sixty years would alone ensure his lasting fame, as one of the most versatile and subtle of Britain’s players, on stage and screen. As a director he persistently underrates himself, on the grounds that he is less concerned with aesthetic effect than in using film to help people think and live better: but this alone makes him an auteur of singular merit. Gandhi and Cry Freedom truly made their mark on people’s lives. His most characteristic films record the lives of people who for one reason or another inspire him to want to share their influence.

Lord Attenborough instantly agreed to be a Patron of Bristol Silents: “It was a silent movie – The Gold Rush – that convinced me where my future lay. Silent films, in an astonishingly brief time, created an entirely new and unprecedented art form, that at its best has a power that has never been surpassed. Every film maker of today can and must still find great inspiration in the silents”.

Lord Attenborough’s visit to Bristol silents last year to introduce his biopic Chaplin will not readily be forgotten by the lucky ones who were present. As always he gave totally of himself, and spoke movingly and brilliantly about Chaplin and the silents staying to talk unhurriedly before driving off to a very late bed-time. And this was after a long and trying day in Wales, working on the Dragon Project. True, he was then only 79... Happy Birthday, Richard!