Richard Attenborough: The film bosses wanted Gandhi to be sexy - and be played by Richard Burton

Pictured in 1982: Richard with the nine Academy Awards awarded for Gandhi

Award-winner: Richard Attenborough on the set of Gandhi

Richard Attenborough: The film bosses wanted Gandhi to be sexy - and be played by Richard Burton

By Richard Attenborough

My father was the reason why it became so important to me to make a film about Mahatma Gandhi, the great Indian leader - so much so that I would pursue this quest for 20 years, suffer all sorts of rejection in trying to raise the finance and very nearly bankrupt myself.

The Governor - as my brothers and I always called my father - had always wanted me to follow in his footsteps and become an academic. When I decided on acting as a career I knew in my heart of hearts that he was disappointed. Even as an adult, I still desperately wanted to prove myself to him.

If I could make a film with something important to say, perhaps he would take real pride in what I was doing. So I was receptive when a proposal for a film on the Mahatma - a Sanskrit word meaning 'Great soul' - was put to me in 1962.

Gandhi was someone the Governor held in very high esteem. Back in 1931, when I was eight years old, Gandhi had come to Britain to take part in discussions about the future independence of India. And we'd seen him together, the Governor and I, at the local cinema in some grainy black-and-white newsreel footage.

I remembered the sneer in the commentator's strangled upper-class vowels as he described the high hopes this small, nut-brown man had for his people. I remembered that Winston Churchill had famously shrugged him off as 'that naked fakir'.

I remembered Gandhi had taken tea with the King at Buckingham Palace, clad only in his loincloth and sandals. When reporters asked if he was under-dressed, the Mahatma retorted: 'I believe His Majesty was wearing enough for both of us.'

All this came back to me 30 years later while I sat facing a man named Moti Kothari at the Waldorf in London as he earnestly explained his idea for a film to me. What I remembered with the greatest clarity was how the people around my father and me in the cinema had sniggered during the newsreel, and the Governor saying: 'They don't understand. Gandhi is extraordinary. He is truly a remarkable man.'

That was good enough for me. And so I acceded to Kothari's initial request that I should read a biography of Gandhi.

I didn't know Kothari at all. He had rung me out of the blue after getting my number from a mutual friend. He was very insistent and despite some misgivings, I agreed to meet him.

A grave, middle-aged Indian, he was a dedicated follower of Gandhi who had left India in disgust following the Mahatma's assassination in January

1948. Now he felt he had a mission to disseminate the story of his life.

His assertion that I was the person to make such a film took me by surprise. A screen actor since 1942, I had been fortunate enough to achieve star billing and all the trappings of celebrity. But I'd found myself typecast as the cheeky Cockney in stories which seemed to lack any real artistry or substance.

In an effort to achieve something worthwhile, I'd recently become an independent producer, but, at the time of my meeting with Mr Kothari, I could lay claim to only two low-budget films with a third in production. I certainly hadn't directed anything.

I began reading the biography and less than a tenth of the way through something knocked me for six. The young Gandhi, then a newly qualified lawyer practising in South Africa, was walking along a pavement with a friend when two white men approached from the opposite direction.

Gandhi's friend pulled him into the gutter to let the lordly pair pass unimpeded, as was customary at the time. After they'd gone Gandhi said calmly to his companion: 'It has always been a mystery to me that men should feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow human beings.'

I was thunderstruck. He was then in his early 20s and, for me, this observation demonstrated a perception far beyond his years - one that was, indeed, as the Governor had said, truly remarkable.

I rang Mr Kothari to ask if his project had any backers. 'Money,' I said. 'Have you got any money to make the film?'

He sounded bewildered. 'No, Mr Attenborough, I don't have any money.'

I took a deep breath and told him I would assemble the funding because I was determined this film would be made. What was more, I would direct it myself.

This was totally insane. Why would anyone in their right mind entrust the direction of a major production, set in a faraway land and no doubt costing a fortune, to an actor totally devoid of any relevant experience?

The only person who supported me in this patently absurd ambition was my wife, Sheila. She said if this was something I really cared about, then I shouldn't let anything or anyone put me off.

What neither of us realised was that the filming of Gandhi would impact on every aspect of our lives and those of our three young children for years to come. At that time, we owned our Queen Anne house in Richmond outright.

I had a Rolls with a personalised number-plate and Sheila had a Jag. We had the beginnings of an art collection. We had a nanny and a chauffeur. Bills came in and they were paid. All this, with one phone call, I was placing in jeopardy.

In the years that followed, bills weren't paid on time, and I was often absent from home, either trying to raise money or doing lucrative acting jobs in distant places, just to keep the project afloat.

At one point, I sold three paintings by Stanley Spencer, my pride and joy, for a pittance to tide us over.

From the start, I knew I would face enormous problems with the sheer logistics of the epic story I intended to tell. In India, I would need the co-operation of the government, the armed forces, police, railways and, above all, the huge and lumbering bureaucracy that we, the British, had left behind.

But I had contacts. I knew Earl Mountbatten of Burma, the last British viceroy in India, because my first film, In Which We Serve, was based on his wartime naval exploits. He put my idea to the present prime minister, Pandit Nehru, who gave approval in principle for the project. So I flew to Delhi to meet him.

Nehru was a revelation. In his office he produced an album of snapshots, his collection recording India's long march to independence, and we got down on our hands and knees to pore over them.

Throughout he referred to Gandhi as Bapu, which, he told me was the respectful Hindi word for father. Here was a snap of Bapu spinning cotton at his ashram. There was another with the young Nehru himself, laughing together like naughty schoolboys. The prime minister told me priceless anecdotes. I was elated.

I paid Nehru a second visit months later, and he made two observations. The first concerned the problem of finding an actor to play Gandhi. I needed a trained professional, not just a lookalike.

The prime minister's own surprising choice was Alec Guinness, which took me aback because Alec was English.

'The nationality is unimportant,' Nehru declared. 'All that matters is that he should be very good. Besides, the idea of being portrayed by an Englishman would have made Bapu laugh a great deal.'

His second observation was the only injunction he ever issued: 'Richard, do not turn him into a deity; he was too great a man to be deified.'

But after this encouraging start came years of frustration. Four billionaire brothers, a maharaja and a maverick movie-mogul would let me down. And over and over again, Hollywood refused to invest a cent in my epic project.

The breakthrough came when Indira Gandhi, Nehru's daughter, was re-elected as India's prime minister, and provided unstinting support. Not only would her government put up a third of the funding, but she miraculously opened doors that had previously been shut.

I couldn't count the number of times I'd flown out to India, totally broke, or the endless humiliating hours I'd waited in the stifling corridors of ministerial buildings, seeking permission to film in various places only to get bogged down in layer upon layer of bureaucracy.

But now there would be no more standing in corridors. I had an official letter confirming that I could call on the unpaid collaboration of all three armed services in India, the police and the entire railway network.

Although there was still more money to be raised, at last I could get under way. We made final decisions about location sites, built sets, amassed costumes and embarked on the thousand-and-one negotiations that would set the whole production in motion.

At this stage, I had no leading actor. Alec Guinness had long ago rejected the part of Gandhi, saying he was 'too grey-eyed, too heavy and just plain too old'.

Other stars had been approached or suggested. One American studio had intimated they might be prepared to back me if I cast Richard Burton because he was sexy - an idea so idiotic it was not worth further thought.

My own first choice had been Anthony Hopkins, who was really keen and even checked into a health farm, losing a couple of stone before concluding it would be physically impossible. Over the years, Dirk Bogarde, Peter Finch, Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay all excluded themselves for the same reason.

Finally, I approached John Hurt, who had just received rave reviews for The Elephant Man. He was interested but again doubted he could look convincing as Gandhi. So we agreed on a full makeup and wardrobe test.

I was in the process of setting this up when my theatre-director son Mike remembered a young actor who'd been a magical Hamlet some years ago at Stratford. His professional name was Ben Kingsley.

I went to see him in a play and thought him absolutely wonderful. I went backstage to ask if he would test on the same day as John Hurt. Ben, 36 at the time, believed my sudden appearance had some kind of mystical synergy because, only days earlier, his wife had bought him a biography of Gandhi which he'd just started to read.

It was only then I learned his name was originally Krishna Bhanji. He was the son of an English mother and an Asian GP; his father's side of the family had come from Gujarat - Mahatma Gandhi's birthplace.

As Ben Kingsley, he had worked his way up the ladder of the Royal Shakespeare Company from spear-carrier to leading man. However, his screen experience was limited to a few brief appearances in Coronation Street and one small part in a film.

We screen-tested John and Ben, with full body and facial make-up and clad only in the dhoti, a loincloth of white homespun cotton draped from waist to knee. After I'd seen the rushes, I invited John to view his test.

'Oh, Christ,' he said after a moment, 'I look like a bloody front-row forward.'

Then together we looked at Ben's test. Suddenly, here was a lithe Indian man, totally at home in his skin, who seemed to have worn a dhoti all his life. And he radiated a charisma that you instantly believed could bind millions to his cause.

It was John who spoke first. 'Dickie, my dear, you've found your Mahatma. Best of luck to you both.'

We began shooting in 1980, 18 years after that first meeting with Moti Kothari in the Waldorf. Kothari was sadly dead by then, but in tribute to him a Hindu priest blessed the camera. Then we set to work. The biggest scene we had to prepare was the reenactment of the assassinated Gandhi's huge funeral procession through Delhi, which we planned to film on the 33rd anniversary of the actual event.

We researched everything meticulously. We even knew the exact number of uniformed guards lining the route.

What couldn't be counted were the people who'd packed Rajpath, the ceremonial avenue in Delhi, to pay their last respects. In the old newsreels we watched, they'd stretched as far as the eye could see. And somehow, long before the advent of computer-generated imagery, we had to recruit a similar mass of citizens, making sure no one was dressed inappropriately.

Rehearsals were held on a disused airfield. I mapped out in great detail each of the shots we needed.

We would get one chance at this. It would all have to be done during a single mile-long journey. Eleven separate camera crews would be needed.

We recruited 25,000 'front-line' extras, all of whom had to be rehearsed and costumed - and paid in cash. But there then remained the problem of attracting the mass of people required for the background.

That was why we chose to film on the anniversary, in the hope that this might bring out enormous crowds anyway. But, just in case, we also laid on trucks to bring in thousands more from the surrounding countryside.

On the evening before, we held a briefing for the camera units. I told them we had no idea how big tomorrow's unpaid crowd would be. It might only be a few hundred or as many as a quarter of a million.

Whatever the numbers, we only had permission to film for one morning, so we had to press on and do the best we could.

Work started at 3am. By sunrise, the actors in the procession were dressed, made-up and gradually moving into their allotted positions. And I was glad to see a tide of local people beginning to pour through the entry points, where wardrobe assistants were handing out suitable clothing to cover anything too modern.

For the master shot, I was with the crew of a remote-controlled camera positioned on top of a crane, which was to rise from the catafalque in one smooth movement, pulling back and back to take in the thousandstrong cortege, the troops, the horses, the honour guard, the massed crowd, and the domes and minarets of India's seat of government.

Everything was finally in position and the whole area jam-packed with people as far as the eye could see. Watching what was being filmed on a monitor, I gave the signal. 'Action!' yelled the first assistant through his megaphone, and the procession began.

My excitement mounted with the crane arm. So far, the shot was perfect. But as the camera soared past the branches of a tree, a little Indian boy turned, looked directly into the lens and stuck out his tongue.

There was no time to reflect on this, no possibility of repeating the ruined shot. With only three hours remaining, we had to press on.

And we did, filming the procession for a few minutes from one position, stopping, racing to new positions and starting again.

It was clear at the planning stage that I couldn't direct this sequence from a distance. I had to be in the thick of it.

This is why a portly British general with overlong, white hair and horn-rimmed glasses makes a fleeting appearance in the finished film, walking backwards behind the bier.

Then suddenly, I realised the dummy representing the dead Mahatma lying there would not pass muster in close-up.

An urgent message was sent to Ben, the one actor who hadn't been needed and who'd been given the day off.

He arrived in the nick of time, taking the place of the dummy for our final shot, and lay exposed and motionless.

And then it was all over. We were inundated with calls from newspapers wanting to know how many people had turned up. We asked the police, who'd manned the entry points, and the figure they gave was 400,000 - the biggest crowd scene in film history.

I was back in my hotel room when a shaken Ben came to see me. On his return from the set, he'd been handed an anonymous letter, delivered that morning before we began filming.

It contained a threat to shoot him dead if he dared to lie on Mahatma Gandhi's bier.

This isn't b****y Tinkerbell!

Diana Hawkins, Attenborough's business partner, writes:

In an attempt to dispel widespread misconceptions about the film, Dick held a press conference in Delhi before we started shooting. The Indian Fourth Estate proved very lively - and the questions, though courteous, were all wide of the mark. Everyone, it seemed, had their own idea of what this film was really about.

The project was a political and religious football - and it was getting kicked all over the place.

I could sense Dick's frustration. Although a heroically patient man, there have been times in his life when the extreme pressures he places on himself make him go so red that he looks as if he's going to have a heart attack. I call these incidents the 'poppy-eyed screamers'.

As the news conference wore on, I could see the red tide rising in his face. One young journalist asked if he was willing to confirm that Ben Kingsley made his screen debut in a pornographic film. This was met with an uncharacteristically terse denial.

Then a middle-aged woman at the back of the room asked how we intended to show the Mahatma on screen. Dick relaxed as he enthused about Ben, the acclaimed actor whose meticulous research had included studying Gandhi's voice and gait in old newsreels.

The woman was unimpressed. This was sacrilege, she said. Richard needed to be aware that Gandhi was a deity in this country, not a mere mortal to be caricatured from newsreels. Dick said he was sorry she felt like this. How would she have him portray the Mahatma? 'Not at all. But if you must. .. as a moving light.' At this, Dick's patience finally snapped. 'Madam,' he riposted, 'I am not making a film about bloody Tinkerbell!'

Richard Attenborough: 'How I ended up signing women's breasts while brother David tickled gorillas' chests'

Richard Attenborough: 'How I ended up signing women's breasts while brother David tickled gorillas' chests'

By David Attenborough

Actor and director Richard Attenborough is a giant of the British cinema who knows everyone, from Madonna to Mugabe. Now he is telling his own extraordinary story for the first time. Here, in the third part of our exclusive serialisation of his autobiography, he tells how the strict regime of his loving father set him - and his brothers - on the path to success... and how he and David are really the best of friends...

Once, after the success of my film Gandhi, I was at a reception when an elderly woman with a blue rinse and glittery spectacles came up to me, patted me on the arm and gushed: 'When I saw the way you handled those gorillas, I just knew Mr Gandhi was in safe hands.'

No one with 20-20 vision could possibly mistake me for my brother Dave - he's the tall, thin, clever one with hair - but the shots of him bonding with those over-friendly Rwandan gorillas in his Life On Earth trilogy made a huge impact on TV viewers throughout the world, as have his hundreds of other close encounters with all kinds of wildlife.

My own particular favourite is the one where he's in a cave, practically up to his knees in bat s**t, while talking to camera as if attending a vicar's tea party. I only wish our pa had been alive to see it; he'd have laughed himself silly.

Pa, known to us brothers as the Governor, was a remarkable man whose mantra - long before Tony Blair came on the scene - was 'education, education, education'. He was a Nottinghamshire baker's son who rose to become a don at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, then found his true vocation as principal of Leicester's College of Higher Education. He spent the rest of his working life steering it towards full university status.

Dave, our younger brother Johnny and I were brought up in a large Victorian house on campus. Although our parents were far from affluent, we had three live-in staff - a maid, a cook and a nanny.

On occasion, the Governor could be very stern. He expected us to prove ourselves - I had to win a scholarship to RADA if I wanted to become an actor, and Dave, two years my junior, had to win an open scholarship to Cambridge before he could embark on his natural science degree.

That sounds, I know, very authoritarian. But the Governor's Achilles heel, as we boys quickly discovered, was his crude sense of humour - the bit of him that would have laughed at Dave standing in that cave.

This trait was most manifest at mealtimes, when he supposedly set out to be at his firmest. He and our mother insisted that manners were strictly enforced, and we'd be ordered to leave the room for any lapses.

I can see Dave now, aged about nine, sternly dismissed but having the last word in the doorway. 'That wasn't rude,' he's insisting. Then he puffs out his cheeks and blows the most enormous raspberry. 'That's rude!'

And the Governor sits at the head of the table, trying desperately to keep a straight face.

If he was the studious visionary, beavering away behind the closed door of his study, my mother was the doer. As teenagers, we called her Mary which, I suppose, was avant-garde at the time.

She had been a crusading suffragette, taken part in marches protesting against Franco's fascist regime in Spain, and eventually worked herself to death as one of the founders of the Marriage Guidance Council.

She was the most tactile, energetic and outspoken woman I've ever encountered, and it was she who introduced me to the stage - she was a theatre lover and chairman of the local drama society.

All together: Richard as a youngster, right, with brothers David and Johnny

I'm sure she wanted all her sons to grow up happy and fulfilled, no matter what career they chose. But I'm equally sure that the Governor, who'd pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, yearned for us all to follow in his footsteps. For him, a university degree was the be-all and end-all.

Sadly, my school reports made it clear that his eldest son did not apply himself and was unlikely to enter higher education. Instead of concentrating on my exams, I spent every spare moment on amateur dramatics.

It was equally clear that animal-mad Dave was the clever and assiduous one who inherited our father's love of scholarship.

People have speculated that Dave and I are locked in some kind of deadly sibling rivalry. Nothing could be further from the truth; I burst with pride over everything he has achieved.

The rivalry idea probably stems from the fact that we made an early pact to keep our working lives completely separate and never be interviewed together. In fact, I and both my brothers have followed completely different paths for as long as I can remember.

Almost as soon as they could talk, Dave was obsessed with fish, insects and fossils and Johnny was fascinated by anything mechanical - going on, despite his Cambridge degree in French and Italian, to become the managing director of the Rolls Royce division of a top Mayfair car showroom.

Today, despite the different directions we have taken, Dave, Johnny and I remain constantly in touch. We speak on the phone all the time and, even as octogenarians, still tease each other.

Dave and I both live in Richmond, about a mile apart. My house on the green is Queen Anne, his on the hill is Victorian Gothic. He collects African sculpture; I collect modern paintings and Picasso ceramics.

Only once in my life do I recall my unflappable brother being in a state of near panic. One night during the early 1970s, he arrived at my home after midnight. 'Dick,' he said on the doorstep, 'the most ghastly thing happened today and I don't know what to do.'

By then, he had steadily worked his way up the TV ladder. He'd started as a producer and gone on to become the presenter of Zoo Quest, followed by Quest In Paradise which took him to some far-flung places. He was having the time of his life, but then he had been sidelined into TV management.

He became controller of the new BBC2, where, instead of making his own shows it had been his job to commission others. Promotion followed and, still unhappily deskbound, he'd become director of programmes for BBC1 and BBC2.

What he had come to tell me in such a state of alarm was that he had been called in that day and asked to become director-general of the entire BBC. And he didn't know what to do.

I understood his dilemma. This was the most tremendous honour and one that would undoubtedly make our father, then approaching the end of his long life, very proud indeed. However, I knew without a shadow of a doubt it would be disastrous for Dave.

'I don't want to do that, do I, Dick?' he asked. 'You?' I replied. 'Sit on your a**e, chairing meetings and making endless policy decisions until you collect a gold watch and a pension? Of course you don't.'

His relief was instant and palpable. 'You're absolutely right. I'll say no first thing in the morning.'

He turned his talents instead to the deeply satisfying and wildly successful Life On Earth series, which has taken Dave, the brilliant presenter, reluctant celebrity and best-selling author, to every corner of the globe.

Like me, he relishes his work and has no intention of retiring despite the death of his beloved wife, Jane, in 1997 and the need for new knees - which he obstinately ignores.

Believe it or not, I once managed to get him into drag. At the age of 12, I decided to put on a variety show in the local church hall. From boys in my Scout troupe I assembled a number of acts including a singer, a juggler and a conjuror so inept he might have inspired Tommy Cooper.

But the centre-piece of the show was to be a comedy skit about two female cleaners, entitled Lydies Wot Come To Oblige. Naturally, I was to star as one of the 'lydies', but needed to find the other.

For once Dave was proving immune to both my bullying and my blandishments. He said he'd rather die than put on a dress.

I resorted to low cunning and made him an offer he simply couldn't refuse. I said every penny of the show's profits would go straight to the RSPCA. He gave in and did it. And very pretty he looked, too.

He got his revenge some years later. When my first film, In Which We Serve, came to Leicester, he was buttonholed by a reporter who wanted to know if we were related. Dave replied with disdain: 'Only distantly.'
* * * * * *

When I went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London (RADA), it was 1940 and, with so many men away in the Services, male students were at a premium. In the play The Lady With The Lamp, I found myself in the leading male role opposite three different Florence Nightingales.

One of them was a girl in the year ahead of me. Her name was Sheila Sim. She was not only stunningly attractive, but sweet-natured and natural, without any snobbish airs or graces. Over rehearsals, we got to know each other and embarked on an old-fashioned courtship.

We have been married, now, for more than 60 years. No matter where I've travelled, either to make films or appear in them, she has travelled too. She is, as Mary Mills, wife of Sir John, once said, 'the woman who follows her stubborn old man to the ends of the earth'.

Until I asked her recently, I couldn't remember how or when I asked Sheila to marry me. She informed me that while we were at RADA I'd asked every day, first thing in the morning. 'But we both knew we were playing a game and it was far too early to settle down.'

Soon after graduation, she was appearing in a play directed by John Gielgud at the Westminster Theatre and I used to go every night and watch from the wings.

How the Mail covered the tragic news of Richard's family loss in the tsunami

'One evening,' she went on, 'you didn't propose and I became a little anxious. So on my exit I stole over to you in the dark and asked if you still wanted to marry me. A bit puzzled, you gave me to understand that you did. And I said: "Well ask me then!"'

We became officially engaged and were married in January 1945 at St Mary Abbots church in Kensington. Sheila wore a long, blue-grey dress, looking beautiful, and I wore my RAF sergeant's uniform, which still hangs in my wardrobe today.

By then, I'd already had a series of lucky breaks - most notably, while I was still at RADA, being auditioned by Noel Coward, who was looking for a young unknown to play a small part in the naval propaganda film, In Which We Serve.

Sir Noel was then at the pinnacle of his fame. Overtly gay long before it was legal, he was a witty, clever, powerful and wealthy man. He was also probably the kindest, most generous person I have ever encountered.

His thoughtfulness was apparent from our very first encounter. I was the awe-struck teenage nobody, standing in the middle of a huge soundstage, nervously awaiting the arrival of this famous person and terrified I'd make a fool of myself.

The great man swept in, flanked as always by his two lady associates, and advanced towards me, hand outstretched. 'You won't know me - I'm Noel Coward. You, of course, are Richard Attenborough.' As he'd known it would, his self-deprecation put me at my ease. After we'd talked a while, Noel told me I'd landed the part of the young stoker. It was the start of a 30-year friendship, during which he would become godfather to my son Michael.

Within weeks, I was back on that same soundstage. It now contained a huge tank filled with tepid water, representing the North Sea, in which we shipwrecked sailors - including Noel, who was both director and star - were to cling to a life-raft.

It was hardly a glamorous introduction to film-making. The water was covered in oil, supposedly from our sunken destroyer's fuel tanks, which quickly turned rancid in the studio heat. This foul-smelling slick clung to our faces and hair.

On the very last day, the rest of us lowered ourselves gingerly into the tank, holding our noses. Noel's approach was rather different.

Launching himself from the camera platform, he performed a spectacular bellyflop and surfaced, covered in slime, to pronounce with hauteur: 'Darlings, there's dysentery in every ripple.'

It was Noel who also gave Sheila her first break, in a six-month theatrical tour. Both our careers took off in the immediate post-war years as the whole population went crazy over a crop of young film stars.

It wasn't to do with acting or talent. We just happened to be in the right place at a time when the public wanted an escape from years of austerity and the illusion of glamour.

After the film Brighton Rock came out in 1948 - in which I played the would-be gangster, Pinkie - I experienced celebrity on a scale I could never have envisaged. The publicity director would collect me in a chauffeured Austin Princess, and off we'd go to clubs, pubs, mayoral parlours, ballrooms, bathing beauty contests and Odeons up and down the country.

I've never heard so many screaming women in all my life. Dozens of the handkerchiefs I wore in my breast pocket were snatched as souvenirs. While some women thrust autograph books at me, others proffered their hands, arms and even their breasts for signature, yelling: 'Sign me here, Dickie.'

Heads turned everywhere we went. It reached the point where I couldn't venture into King's Road in Chelsea, where we then lived, to buy a pound of potatoes without being mobbed.

We were ordinary young people suddenly transformed into these objects of adulation; openly smoking like chimneys, which was considered sophisticated, but forbidden to be photographed holding a glass, or - something I particularly resented - to express a political view.

And I'm ashamed to say that for three or four years I basked in all the attention.

There was a Richard Attenborough Fan Club, whose quarterly magazine at one time had 1,500 subscribers. Like idiots, Sheila and I would pose for ghastly codded-up pictures of domestic bliss, cooing over the breakfast table or mugging amazement beside our first car, a Citro?n, when I finally passed my driving test.

We weren't rich, despite the illusion of wealth fostered by first-class travel, red carpets and hired limousines. We were, however, carefree and comfortable. In the late Forties, when a manual worker was lucky to earn ?5, I was being paid ?120 a week to play a film lead.

At the end of 1952, we were asked to appear together on stage in a new whodunit. My film career had gone into the doldrums at the time and, the impresario teased me, it was Sheila that the distinguished lady playwright primarily wanted.

The play was The Mousetrap, and the authoress who eventually accepted me as the male lead was Agatha Christie. We took it to the provinces for a twomonth try-out and the first performance in Nottingham was anything but a triumph.

A gloomy post-mortem was held in our hotel lobby. Agatha sat there, absorbing our pessimism but saying nothing. Then she got up to go to bed. Halfway up the stairs, she leaned over the banisters and delivered one of the greatest understatements in theatrical history.

'Don't worry, my dears. I'm sure we shall get a nice little run out of it.' I began to think so too, and Sheila and I decided to take a 10 per cent stake in the production. It was the wisest business decision I've ever made. Indeed, as it went on to become the world's longest-running play, it should have made us comfortable for the rest of our lives.

Foolishly, I sold some of my share to open a short-lived Mayfair restaurant called The Little Elephant. Later still, I disposed of the remainder in order to keep afloat Gandhi, a film I was ready to sacrifice almost anything to make - and which, as I'll describe tomorrow, became one of the greatest adventures of my life.

• Abridged extract from Entirely Up To You, Darling by Richard Attenborough and Diana Hawkins, published by Hutchinson tomorrow at ?20. ?2008, Richard Attenborough and Diana Hawkins. To order a copy for ?18 (p&p free), call 0845 155 0720.

Richard Attenborough dispels the 'lies about Winnie and me' in the second exclusive extract of his life story ...

Richard Attenborough dispels the 'lies about Winnie and me' in the second exclusive extract of his life story ...

By Richard Attenborough

We stopped to fill up the car at a petrol station on a remote country road in South Africa and I got out to go to the gents.

Standing at the urinal, I was joined by two beefy white men, both rather drunk.

They took up position on either side of me.

Illegal gesture: Richard Attenborough was breaking apartheid laws by holding Winnie's hand

Sensing one of them staring, I gave him a friendly grin. I didn't catch what he said at first, partly because of this thick Afrikaaner accent.

Then he said it again: 'You commie bastard nigger f***er ... you bin asking for trouble ... now you gonna geddit.'

My brain went into overdrive. It was two against one and they were younger and fitter than me. But I was sober and, even at 60, hopefully quicker on my feet.

As the first meaty fist began to descend, I feinted to one side before making a dash for the exit. I burst through the chest-high saloon-type doors and heard them swing back and hit the first of my would-be assailants on the rebound.

Richard with Nelson Mandela and his wife Graca Machel listening to Gordon Brown speaking before the unveiling of a statue of the former President of South Africa last year

Having gained valuable seconds, I pelted towards the car with my wife Sheila in it, shouting at our friend in the driver's seat to start the engine.

She did and, with great presence of mind, leaned across to open the passenger door. I piled in and we sped off, tyres screaming, until we got to a safe house in Johannesburg.

Shortly afterwards, Sheila and I left South Africa, persuaded that it was not safe to stay.

All the way to the airport, we were shadowed by security police vehicles, each containing two impassive white men in dark suits and glasses.

The lead car tailgated us, continually nudging our bumper.

I have never in my entire life been so glad to board a British Airways jumbo as I was that day. As the plane lumbered into the sky, I heaved a huge sigh of relief.

Then, as the lush city of Johannesburg began to recede beneath us, I had a glimpse of the barren and bleak black township of Soweto and its endless rows of shanty dwellings.

I knew at that moment, with absolute certainty, that I would not be intimidated. These bullies would not stop me. I had to make Cry Freedom.

Richard Attenborough in the film Brighton Rock in 1947

The idea for this film exposing the then apartheid regime in South Africa came after I was introduced to Donald Woods, a South African journalist, and he handed me a book he had written about the dead black activist, Steve Biko.

He wanted me to make a film about him. At that point, my knowledge of Biko was minimal.

I knew he was the founder of some kind of liberation movement, had read reports of his death in police custody and was aware of accusations of a cover-up by the South African authorities.

Only later did I discover that Woods was the chief accuser and the book he'd handed me contained the evidence that Steve had been murdered.

I have to admit it remained unread for nearly a year. I was busy travelling the world promoting my new film, Gandhi.

But then there was a row about its premiere in South Africa after I learned - embarrassingly, from the press at Heathrow Airport - that it was to be a whites-only event. A government 'exemption' was needed for it to be multi-racial.

I was so sickened by the very idea that black and white South Africans were not allowed to sit in the same cinema without a 'special dispensation', that I finally sat down and read Biko from cover to cover.

It was an amazing piece of work, written in secret, smuggled out of South Africa and published after a penniless Donald, his wife and five kids had been granted refugee status in Britain.

I next read Donald's autobiography in which he described how, as a well-off and respected editor of a newspaper, he had risked everything by attacking in print the strong-arm tactics employed by the white minority government against the black majority.

Priding himself on his evenhandedness, he also used his editorials to decry the increasingly militant Black Consciousness Movement, headed by the young black fire-brand, Steve Biko.

Biko challenged the editor to meet him to debate their differences, man to man - not easy since Biko was a 'banned person' living under house arrest.

But they met and, to Woods's initial discomfort, Steve proved more than his intellectual equal, well able to demolish many of his most sincerely held beliefs.

And, although the younger man scorned white liberals who attached themselves to the black cause, he and Donald forged an unlikely friendship.

Then, four years later, Steve disappeared, picked up by BOSS, the South African Bureau of State Security.

As Donald was to discover, he was held naked and manacled in solitary confinement before dying from massive head injuries.

The Minister of Justice announced that the death was self-inflicted due to a 'hunger strike'.

An outraged Donald demanded an inquest, but this time he'd pushed the apartheid regime too far and he, too, was declared a banned person and forbidden to be with more than one person at any time.

This edict cruelly included his wife, Wendy, and their five children.

He decided he had to get out of South Africa after an acid-impregnated T-shirt sent through the post as an anonymous birthday present badly burned his six-year-old daughter.

He fled in disguise across the border and, having rejoined his family, flew on to London.

What I found fascinating about this story was how these two men, Biko and Woods, had formed a real friendship across the racial divide and how Donald had chosen to jeopardise everything he held dear - family, career, home, even his own life - to reveal the truth about Steve's death.

I had inherited my code of behaviour from my parents and had never had cause to doubt it. I had always strived, as best I could, to uphold their principles.

Donald, on the other hand, had had to face up to the realisation that his parents' racism was immoral and then do all he could to bring it to an end. This was what I wanted to bring to the screen.

And this was why I had come in secret to South Africa - to find out more. I was warned that the people I was going there to meet would be watched round the clock and their homes bugged.

I had to be very careful indeed because a former member of the security police had warned me that they were were quite capable of arresting me on some trumped-up charge. Worst-case scenario, Sheila and I could simply disappear.

It was Donald's idea that we should not travel directly to South Africa but fly first to Nairobi in Kenya and then take a short-haul flight to Swaziland to visit a ground-breaking multi-racial school I was closely associated with and for which I was a fund-raiser.

From there, we slipped over into South Africa via a little used border crossing. We drove to Johannesburg, and from there flew on to Cape Town.

There, friends of Donald took us to a place I will never forget, a construction site which was hell in the making, covering 18 square miles and encircled by a concrete and barbed-wire fence.

It was to be a black shanty town - source of all the cheap labour on which comfortable life in Cape Town depended.

Naively, I asked my companions why the brand-new highway that ended at the gate was four lanes wide.

What kind of vehicles was it expected to take? 'Tanks,' was the chilling answer.

So far, my undercover research into the horrors of apartheid had gone unnoticed.

The flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town had been an internal one, and no passports were needed. I kept my hat on and my head down and no one recognised us.

But at our hotel, to my dismay, I noticed the word 'Attenborough' screaming at me from a front-page headline of an Afrikaans newspaper.

I got someone to translate it: the story said Sheila and I had been spotted dining in a restaurant with an opposition politician, and it went on to speculate, wholly inaccurately, about the reason for our visit.

I was shaken. It was nearly a decade since I'd appeared on the screen in any big role and I sincerely believed I'd be able to travel around South Africa without attracting any attention.

More caution was needed. So when we went to see Steve Biko's widow, we began by driving to one hotel, walking through the entrance and straight out again through the back door, where another car was waiting to take us to our meeting place.

In the lounge of a different hotel, we sat around a small table to talk. Ntsiki was a shy, dignified and quietly spoken woman who'd given Steve two sons. With her was Steve's mother.

They listened intently as I told them that, as a white man, I wanted to open the eyes of other white people all over the world to the terrible injustices of apartheid.

I also hoped, by depicting the friendship between Steve and Donald Woods, to show that change was possible.

And demonstrating the facts about Steve's death might even bring his killers to justice.

After I'd finished, the two women spoke to each other in a language I didn't understand and then asked if they might have some time alone. Sheila and I retreated out of earshot.

Then Ntsiki beckoned us back. 'Ma-Biko and I would like you to make your film,' she said formally. 'You came all this way to ask our permission and for that we thank you. We ask only one thing. Make it strong.'

Sheila and I next flew into Bloemfontein, and my heart sank at the airport as we were greeted by flashbulbs and reporters shouting questions.

Next morning, we managed to slip away in a hire car to drive to the remote town of Brandfort. We were on a mission to meet a key figure in the black struggle.

Sheila drove and I kept an eye out behind, making sure no one was tailing us.

Following our written instructions, we pulled into a parking area which boasted a single public phone kiosk.

Suddenly, a black car containing two white men in dark suits and glasses pulled in, then another, which stopped at right angles to the first. A third arrived, effectively boxing us in.

No one got out of the cars and, thoroughly spooked, we remained in ours. Within minutes, a Volkswagen van arrived.

A black woman clad in purple robes and looking like an empress descended from it and made her stately way to the exact centre of the car park, where she stood immobile in the blazing sun.

This was Winnie, wife of the imprisoned black leader Nelson Mandela. As a banned person, she was only ever allowed to be with one person, so Sheila remained in our car while I went over to greet her.

We then set off to her home in a nearby black township. The Volkswagen led the way, we followed and the three black cars followed us.

Winnie's house - I'd call it a hut - was a small brick-built box with a corrugated roof, a patch of vegetation and an outside tap.

Outside, as she had warned me, a television crew from the state-run South African Broadcasting Corporation was waiting.

They apparently knew I was coming. The interviewer told me Mrs Mandela had already spoken to him and he hoped I would do the same. I said I would consider it but wanted to spend some time with her first.

Winnie was engagingly light-hearted, with no sign of the violent and sadistic streak that would eventually bring about her downfall years later in post-apartheid South Africa.

She'd been here, under house arrest, for almost seven years since the police raided her Soweto home at dawn and spirited her and her belongings away.

We moved on to the film and I outlined the story and what I hoped to achieve.

She asked how soon I would make it. 'If all goes according to plan,' I said, 'shooting will start in October.'

When I got up to leave, she again warned me about the TV crew outside. Did I plan to talk to them? I considered.

They'd already filmed me and, as Winnie had already given them an interview, it seemed churlish to refuse.

She led the way out of the house and paused on the doorstep for me to catch up.

Incorrigibly tactile, I took her hand. Then I gave the man from SABC the most bland interview of my life.

The following afternoon, we flew unrecognised to Johannesburg, to be met by another of Donald's friends.

On the drive to his house in Pretoria, he told us that all day SABC had been trailing pictures of me and Winnie, promising sensational revelations in the evening news bulletin.

I brushed it off, telling him what I'd said during the interview: nothing, absolutely nothing, just plain boring. But boring it wasn't.

The white anchorman gave a rundown of my film credentials over a shot of me and Winnie entering her house. A little of my uninformative interview followed.

Then he asked rhetorically: what was Mr Attenborough really doing in South Africa?

He proceeded to answer this with a whole series of preposterous and inflammatory accusations.

I'd come as a communist agitator, he said, financed by Moscow to bring about armed insurrection.

I'd even informed Mrs Mandela, the banned wife of a terrorist, now serving life imprisonment, when the revolution was due to begin.

My voice could be heard saying: 'If all goes according to plan, shooting will start in October.'

They then showed me and Winnie leaving her hut, hand in hand. The anchorman ranted on, demanding that the authorities take immediate action against me.

I must be thrown out of the country and never allowed to return.

I exploded with apoplectic steam. My host stopped me in mid-flow, putting a finger to his lips and jerking his head in the direction of the French windows leading into the garden.

My head was reeling. This man was an accredited diplomat of the U.S. State Department, and he was telling me his house was bugged.

And I'd just seen a totally rigged piece of reportage being broadcast to the whole of South Africa by the state television service.

Out in the garden, he explained how I'd been duped. There was no way the SABC was ever going to broadcast their interview with Winnie.

As a banned person, nothing she said could be published in any form.

And if the security police wanted to arrest me, they certainly had cause: I'd been filmed touching her - holding her hand - which was also illegal.

He asked how close the television team had been to the house while we were inside, and I told him they'd been about 20 feet away.

That almost certainly meant, he said, that my voice had been picked up by other microphones, planted inside Winnie's home.

And that meant that it must have been the police who recorded what I said and supplied the tape to the TV network.

This was an increasingly frightening country to be in, and common sense said I should have left there and then.

But I was b*****ed if I was going to let the likes of that TV anchorman determine what I did or didn't do.

It was on the return journey from another meeting with one of Biko's associates that I had my sinister encounter with those two beefy bullies in the gents.

But all their intimidation had achieved was to make me absolutely certain that I would film Cry Freedom come hell or high water.

The film was released in 1987, and four years later, Sheila and I were on our way to a celebration hosted by Oliver Tambo, president of the African National Congress, in North London.

When we stopped at traffic lights, Sheila was aware that the passenger in the rear of the minicab alongside was smiling and waving at me.

There was something familiar about him but, before I could put a name to the face, the lights turned green and we pulled away.

I was still racking my brains when we stopped at the next set of lights and there he was again.

He opened his window; I opened mine. 'Richard!' he exclaimed. 'You do not know me, but I know you. We shall talk at the party.'

And then it hit me: it was Tambo's guest of honour, Nelson Mandela.

This was the man who had strode out of prison just 15 months ago after 27 years of incarceration.

This was the man who turned his prison into a university and his jailer into a friend. This was the man who ended apartheid.

Our cars arrived at the Tambos' house. On the pavement, I hugged Nelson; he hugged me.

'I want to thank you, Richard,' he said. 'Your film had more impact on the white population than any speech I ever made in my life.'

I was completely overwhelmed by his generosity. Was it true? Of course not. But I like to think Cry Freedom did help the struggle.

• Abridged extract from Entirely Up To You, Darling by Richard Attenborough and Diana Hawkins, published by Hutchinson on Thursday at ?20. Copyright 2008, Richard Attenborough and Diana Hawkins.

To order a copy for ?18 (p&p free), call 0845 155 0720.


Steve McQueen: Terrified Richard taking him on a motorbike ride

Fear at full throttle with Steve McQueen

Just as I was finally starting to film Gandhi in 1980, I received the news I'd been dreading - at the age of 50, Steve McQueen was dead.

We first met in the summer of 1962 in Bavaria on the set of The Great Escape.

This was my big international acting breakthrough.

Just three members of the all-male cast were billed above the title: Steve as the Cooler King, Jim Garner as the Scrounger and me as Big X.

Right from the outset, both on-screen and off, there was intense macho rivalry between the Brits and the Yanks.

It came to a head when the two separate groups were lounging around in the sun during a break from shooting.

As always, when time hung heavy, Steve was riding his 500cc Triumph, zooming off between the PoW camp huts and returning to skid around us Brits in ever decreasing dusty circles.

Finally, those piercing blue eyes hidden behind dark glasses, he came to a halt beside me and sat there, twisting the throttle provocatively.

'Wanna ride?' I hesitated. It was 30 years since I'd ridden pillion and, having ended up in hospital as a result, had sworn I'd never do it again.

But national honour was at stake and I knew I couldn't refuse the challenge. 'You bet,' I said heartily.

The next 15 minutes were the most terrifying I can remember as I clung on for dear life, but they cemented a deep friendship.

Steve was a speed freak. He was devastated when the insurers ruled against him performing the most famous motorbike stunt in movie history - but never took the credit for it, always careful to point out it was performed by his double, Bud Ekins.

He had to settle for dressing up as a German chasing Bud in that scene. There's a belief that screenwriters disliked Steve because he was always angling to make his parts bigger.

That, in my experience, was untrue. He was forever fighting to cut lines because he knew, better than anyone, that one telling look is worth any amount of dialogue.

I last saw him a few months before he died. I was on a flying visit to Hollywood and we arranged to meet at his favourite restaurant.

Because I'd been delayed, it seemed strange not to see him when I arrived. About to sit down, I caught sight of a ravaged old man beckoning from one of the bar stools. A shiver ran through me: the old man was Steve.

How do you say farewell to one of your closest friends? What do you talk about that last time? I'll tell you.

We ribbed each other about the day he scared the s*** out of me on his motorbike. He reminded me about the time I dragged him to a football match at Stamford Bridge.

He didn't mention that he had cancer and had only six months to live. When we hugged outside, neither of us said goodbye. I valued his friendship profoundly and miss him more than I can say.

He was one of the great screen actors of all time.

The photo that breaks Richard Attenborough's heart: Diana and the granddaughter he adored... both cut down in their prime

The photo that breaks Richard Attenborough's heart: Diana and the granddaughter he adored... both cut down in their prime

By Richard Attenborough

From Madonna to Mugabe, Richard Attenborough knows absolutely everyone, darling! Now, with his business partner Diana Hawkins, he's telling his extraordinary story. Here, in the first part of our exclusive serialisation of his autobiography, he talks movingly of his friendship with Diana, Princess of Wales, as well as the daughter and granddaughter he lost in shattering circumstances...

The most poignant photograph I possess was taken at the Odeon cinema, Leicester Square, in February 1997. I am in black tie, escorting a beautiful woman in a long evening gown at the charity premiere of In Love And War, my film about the writer Ernest Hemingway. The beautiful woman is our guest of honour, the 35-year-old Princess of Wales.

She has reached the end of the receiving line and in a moment or two, she will turn to the little girl in a party dress who stands waiting to present her with a bouquet and souvenir brochure. This is my darling younger granddaughter, Lucy.

In the excitement of the occasion, Lucy forgot the all-important curtsy and was distraught. As we approached the doors to the dress circle, I was telling the Princess how upset Lucy was.

Fond memories: Sir Richard looks on as his granddaughter Lucy Holland, six, meets Princess Diana in February 1997

Although the audience was on its feet, waiting to applaud her, the Princess turned back to comfort Lucy. She asked for a private demonstration, pronouncing with typical sensitivity: 'That's easily the best curtsy I've ever seen.'

How sad it is to see this picture of them on the only occasion they ever came together - the vibrant young woman, so soon to die, and the beloved child, then six years old, also now lost to us for ever.

Let me begin with Diana. Although there was an age gap of 38 years between us, I became her friend, sounding board, cheerleader and, on occasion, her admonitory Dutch uncle. She would refer to herself jokingly, in deference to my wife Sheila, as 'the other lady in your life'.

I first met her in 1985 after Prince Charles wrote to me at my home in Richmond on Thames. I was away at the time, shooting a film, and he sent a second letter to my hotel in New York. Two missives from Highgrove in a matter of days, both handwritten, the second apologising for 'pestering' me in America. I was intrigued.

The Prince explained that making speeches was causing his young wife a great deal of anxiety. Could I recommend someone discreet who would be willing to give her some tuition?

There was a particular occasion - a ship she was due to launch - which made this a matter of urgency. I replied that I'd be glad to help the Princess myself as soon as I returned to London.

We met at Kensington Palace, where I was greeted at the door by a butler in a tail-coat, accompanied by a liveried footman. The butler's name was Burrell.

He ushered me into a rather formal drawing room. Diana entered. No, I didn't bow - we shook hands - and I don't recall what she was wearing; some sort of floaty skirt, I think.

Lord Attenborough with Lucy when she was just five years old. She died aged 14 in the 2004 Asian tsunami

But I do remember she was ravishingly beautiful and very unsure of herself. Then, and for quite a while afterwards, until she became Darling and I became Dickie, we addressed each other as Ma'am and Sir Richard.

We continued to meet every fortnight, always on a Wednesday, always at the same time. There were two main problems to address. First and foremost was shyness - her habit of dropping her head and looking up at you through that fringe. The other hurdle was the formal nature of the speeches she had to deliver, which were aloof and stilted.

My task, as I saw it, was to persuade the Princess to abandon her script whenever possible and get her to fix on a single person in the audience, speaking directly to him or her, straight from the heart.

I also had to convince her that, just as with actors on a film set, she was the one person on Earth who could do this successfully.

It must have worked because a few days after our third meeting I received from her a message proudly drawing my attention to her 'Oscar-winning, perfect-pitch performance' of the speech we'd rehearsed. It contained two exuberant exclamation marks.

Over the next 12 years, Diana would write more than 40 letters to me in her generous cursive hand, all liberally sprinkled with little sad or smiley faces. When we first met, the world still believed she and Charles were a fairy-tale couple. And, for a while, I believed it, too. But then she gradually confided the heart-breaking truth to me.

A naive and romantic teenager, selected for her virginity and breeding, had fallen head over heels for an older man, believing her feelings were reciprocated in full measure.

The shock of learning there were to be three people in her marriage unhinged her.

There were, nevertheless, some happy times. She and Charles both delighted in their children, and in the summer of 1981 she wrote from Balmoral, where all four were on holiday, to wish me a happy birthday.

Lord Attenborough with his wife Sheila

This is the only letter in which her habitual 'I' becomes a joyful 'we', giving a glimpse of the contented family life that, sadly, would otherwise elude her.

She never told me she was collaborating on a revelatory book with the author Andrew Morton, knowing I would disapprove. Soon afterwards, when transcripts of her private phone conversations were made public, my Sheila and I comforted her as best we could over lunch.

At another lunch, she expressed her disapproval of the Garrick Club tie I habitually wore. Handing me a gift-wrapped box, she cheekily announced our relationship would be at over if I persisted in wearing 'those ghastly cucumber-green and salmon-pink stripes'.

Henceforth, whenever we met, I was under orders to appear in the tasteful navy replacement she had chosen for me herself at Hermes.

Soon after the terms of the royal divorce had been hammered out, she wrote with what then seemed like optimism: 'The last months have been a nightmare but there is light in the tunnel.'

And then came her death. I still know where I was on that summer Sunday morning in 1997 when the phone rang. Our younger daughter, Charlotte, was calling to tell us Diana had been killed in a car crash. Where? The Pont d'Alma tunnel in Paris.

That year Diana had done me two great favours. The first was that premiere of In Love And War, where my granddaughter Lucy presented the bouquet.

Then, in May, she opened a new arts centre I had helped raised money for, designed for people with disabilities. It was at Leicester University, where my father, an academic, had spent most of his working life, and where I had grown up.

I greeted her as she stepped out of the helicopter; I was wearing her tie. She was pleased I had remembered.

On a tour, she met artists who were blind, frail, deaf, mentally impaired, and spoke to each of them, refusing to be rushed. All too soon we reached the appointed time for her to leave and, as I accompanied her back to the helicopter, I told her about another group who'd been hoping to meet her.

She loped ahead across the muddy field in her high heels to tell the pilot their departure would be delayed. Then, back in the building, I took her into a room where seven youngsters with cerebral palsy showed her how they could dance in their wheelchairs.

Here, I witnessed Diana's greatest gift - a unique combination of touch, loving compassion and empathy. She genuinely wanted - and needed - to connect with the damaged, the disparaged and the unwanted.

Finally freed from the constraints of royal protocol and fully aware of the power of her unprecedented celebrity, her aims in life were to find happiness, to make the world a better place and, above all, to provide a stable and loving home for her two sons.

When Sheila and I got home that night, a letter was awaiting us, the last I would ever receive from her. Hand delivered from Kensington Palace earlier that evening, it began: 'Dearest Dickie, I was so proud to be standing beside you today.'

She was thanking me for asking her to travel all the way up to Leicester to open 'your wonderful new building'. It was signed, as always, 'Diana X'.

Towards the end of August that year, while Sheila and I were relaxing at our home on the Isle of Bute in Scotland, Diana had phoned from somewhere in the Mediterranean. She was on a huge, glamorous yacht, she told me, and having the most wonderful time. On her return to London within days, she said, she would phone again and we would arrange to meet.

Instead, here we were back in a very sombre London preparing to go to her funeral. The public mood in those days before the service was extraordinary, with a mute but increasingly hostile crowd keeping vigil in front of Buckingham Palace. Why, they wanted to know, was no flag flying at half-mast? And why was the silent Queen still hidden away in Scotland?

As the anger grew, I spoke by phone to my film producer friend John Brabourne, husband of Countess Mountbatten, who was in daily contact with Balmoral. He said the place was 'in a state of total turmoil'.

Taken in 1976, here is Richard with wife Sheila and daughters Charlotte, 16, (left) and Jane, 20, at their home in Richmond

We discussed the growing public unrest, which we both feared could pose a threat to the monarchy if left unchecked. I said that, in my opinion, the Queen should be persuaded to make some kind of a public statement and the question of the flag needed to be addressed.

John agreed about the statement but said royal protocol and precedent dictated that the royal standard should never be flown at half-mast, even on the death of the monarch. I said: 'Protocol and precedent be buggered, John. This is getting totally out of hand. If it can't be the royal standard, get them to fly the Union flag. That's the very least she deserves.'

John said he would try. Two days later came an announcement that the Queen was to speak to the nation and a Union flag would be flown at half-mast on the day of the funeral.

As we dressed that Saturday morning to make our way to Westminster Abbey, I reached for the traditional black tie kept for such occasions. Then, with a lump in my throat, I remembered Diana's laughing instruction that, whenever we met, I must wear the navy one she'd selected for me. So I put that on instead.

In Westminster Abbey, seated next to the piano where Elton John was to sing Candle In The Wind, we missed the historic moment when the Queen bowed to Diana's coffin as it passed Buckingham Palace.

What I remember most about the service is the young Earl Spencer's passionate eulogy. As it ended, I heard an extraordinary sound, like the beating wings of a huge flock of birds.

It took a few moments to realise it originated outside the abbey. Beyond the open doors, thousands of people were applauding what they'd heard over the loudspeakers.

That applause was being taken up by the mourners inside, starting at the back and rippling up the nave until, caught up in the emotion of the moment, I was clapping too.

Looking back, I can understand why Earl Spencer's tribute could be interpreted as an attack on the royal family. But at the time I didn't perceive it as lese-majesty.

To me, he was talking about safeguarding his sister's greatest legacy: her beloved boys and their future role in a modern monarchy, fit for the coming millennium and beyond.

Lord Attenborough's daughter Jane, far right, who was tragically killed in the 2004 Tsunami in Thailand

Although, out of insecurity, Diana often hid behind the fallacy that she was 'thick as two short planks', I considered her, in many ways, wise beyond her years.

It was not on a whim that she so often took her sons, unannounced and incognito, to local shops, theme parks, hospitals and hostels for the homeless.

She knew, if William were ever to be king and remain so, he and Harry must not be brought up surrounded by sycophancy and circumscribed by the privileged assumptions of a bygone age.
* * * * * *

Men of my generation used to be admired for keeping a stiff upper lip. There were plenty of such characters in the action films I was in during and after the war. All too often I was cast as the nervy stoker with the trembling lower lip. That trembling lip returned to haunt me years later when I won Oscars for Best Director and Best Film for Gandhi in 1983.

Legend has it that, in my second acceptance speech, I choked up and wept. This is an exaggeration because I don't recall shedding any tears. But I was overcome and I couldn't get the words out. The point being, I am, and always have been, an actor - and actors' emotions, being close to the surface, sometimes appear without conscious volition.

I was astonished at the way the Press latched on to the tears I am supposed to have shed. My puppet in Spitting Image had jets of water spurting out of its eyes, and there were endless weepy cartoons.

Being the ham that I am, I took the mockery on board. Afterwards, whenever I made a speech, I only had to produce a box of Kleenex to get a laugh. The ribbing went on for years.

I suppose it was because men weren't supposed to be emotional. Things are different and so much better these days.

I think it is good that we are now able, even encouraged, to show our feelings - and to be really involved in caring for our children. I would have been a far better father if I had spent more time with mine - Michael, Jane and Charlotte - when they were small.

It's something I wish I could go back and change. I bitterly regret I didn't see my kids as much as I should have done, that I didn't make more of an effort.

I was so sure they'd always be there and, whatever I missed, could be made up later on. Stupidly, I always thought there'd be plenty of time...

Diana Hawkins, Attenborough's co-author continues:

It was December 2004. Dick had just completed the annual task of signing every one of the 1,000 Christmas cards he and Sheila send out to friends and family around the world. Then, on Sunday, December 19, his diary notes innocently: 'Pre-Christmas lunch with Jane, Beau and family.'

Jane, his elder daughter, and her shipbroker husband Michael, known as Beau, were off to spend the festive season in sunnier climes with their teenage children, Sam, Alice and Lucy.

Dick and Sheila went over to their house in Putney for a turkey dinner before they set off. Christmas lunch is an important ritual for the Attenborough-family. They were all determined to observe it - albeit a week early.

The Hollands having left, Dick and Sheila spent a traditional Christmas Day at Old Friars, their substantial, double-fronted Queen Anne house on Richmond Green, with their other daughter, Charlotte, and her family.

They exchanged presents by the Christmas tree and ate turkey with all the trimmings. In the evening, Dick's brother, Sir David Attenborough, and their niece, Sue, came round.

Dick and Sheila were asleep just before 1am on Boxing Day when a massive earthquake erupted thousands of miles away under the Indian Ocean. It triggered 100ft waves that raced towards the coast of Thailand.

There, seven hours ahead of London time, the Holland family were enjoying a leisurely breakfast at their new holiday beach home in Khao Lak.

Beau and his son had a date to join some male friends playing golf on an inland course. They set off, leaving Jane, Alice, Lucy and Beau's elderly mother, another Jane.

Looking towards the distant sea some time later, one of the golfers noticed something odd: the house wasn't there any more. It was as if it had been sucked away.

Minutes later, Beau saw a wall of water rushing towards him and, grabbing a little boy, raced to the clubhouse where he hauled the child onto a roof before a huge wave engulfed them.

As it receded, sucking out and smashing everything in its wake, the men become desperate to reach their families. They found a Thai man with a minibus who was willing to drive them but, after an hour, he refused to go any further.

Beau made it back to the beach on foot. Of his holiday home, only the concrete bones of the ground floor remained. The sand all around was littered with hunks of twisted metal, splintered trees and corpses.

Almost immediately, he came across his drowned 15-year-old daughter, Lucy. He then saw his other daughter, Alice, still alive but very badly injured, being loaded into a truck.

Abandoning the desperate search for his wife and mother, whose bodies would not be identified for many months to come, Beau followed Alice to the local hospital. It was from there, some time later, that he was finally able to phone his brother-in-law, Michael Attenborough, in London.

The last entry in Dick's 2004 diary is for December 26. Planning to attend his beloved Chelsea's Boxing Day match at Stamford Bridge, he'd noted the name of the visiting team, Aston Villa.

This had now been savagely inked out until it was barely legible. Beneath it he had written, heartbreakingly: 'Tsunami disaster. Lost Jane, Lucy and Jane Holland.'

Lord Attenborough continues:

Sheila and I were having breakfast on Boxing Day morning when I heard the back doorbell ring. I saw my son through the glass, looking very odd. I opened the door, knowing something awful had happened. And Michael said very gently: 'Dad, will you go and sit down, please?'

He followed me into the dining room where Sheila was and continued: 'I'm afraid I have something dreadful to tell you both. Jane and Lucy have died in the tsunami.'

I'm not sure we knew what a tsunami was. And we weren't even aware that they were in Thailand, only that they had gone somewhere far away and sunny.

Then Michael went on to tell us what he'd learned from Beau. And that is all I remember of that terrible morning, except that it was the worst day of my life. My memory of it is so completely blank - I've obviously buried it very deeply.

It was our diamond wedding later that month and it turned out that Jane had been organising a huge surprise party. The venue was booked and more than 100 guests, all sworn to secrecy, had agreed to attend.

The celebration never happened. Our 60th wedding anniversary came and went unnoticed.

It is terrible to lose somebody, for them not to be there, to have to recognise the fact that they've completely gone.

As a family, we have always had rituals, formalities observed for as long as I can remember. Mealtimes, for instance, are a terribly important part of the way we live. And you didn't just sit anywhere - we each had our own particular places.

But after the tsunami, Sheila and I simply couldn't bear the thought of those missing faces at our table. So the following year we went away to our other home in Scotland on Christmas Eve to escape that yawning emptiness.

There, if Sheila and I wanted to cry, well, we cried. And if we wanted to laugh because we remembered something funny Jane had said or done and were a bit shocked by our laughter, that was fine, too.

As time has gone on, we've found that we're able to talk about Jane and Lucy, recall them, rather than saying they're gone and mustn't be mentioned.

We can't do that with other people around, but if we're alone decide, because it suits you, that there is life after death.

When I look back, I see the whole of my adult life crammed with ceaseless activity. But in all my roles as actor, director, producer, charity fundraiser, chairman of this, president of that, I've always been aware that it was Sheila, not me, who held us together as a family.

Yet, eternally optimistic and, to a degree, selfish and egocentric, I always believed in a future when I would make it up to the children. In determining the allotment of my time between public and private, work always took precedence.

Supposedly, weekends were set aside for the family. But not as conscientiously as I would now wish. If it needed a Saturday morning to conclude some business, then I took it.

When we lost Ginny - my nickname for Jane - and Luce, that opportunity was gone, never to be recovered. And that has changed my relationship with those who are left to the extent that I will do anything to be with them and we spend much more time together.

I can talk to people about Jane now, although sometimes I can't get the words out. I can also see her. I can feel her touch. I can hear her coming into a room. She comes in laughing or excited or determined, but always full of commitment. That was the very essence of Jane - commitment.

And music. After they died, I started to hear music in my head all the time. Handel is Jane; Puccini is Lucy. I can no longer turn on the radio or listen to CDs because they clash with their music in my head.

Just thinking about Jane now, I am listening to the Messiah: I know that my redeemer liveth. How about that? Me, an agnostic.

I have, I know, been one of the privileged creatures on this Earth, not just slightly but hugely privileged. Even as early as my mid-20s, I was aware of leading a charmed life.

I won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Then, unlike many of my contemporaries, I survived the war unscathed and went on to marry the most wonderful girl in the world.

My career blossomed in so many different areas. I had fame, fortune and good friends.

I became a knight, an ambassador, a president, a commandeur and a chevalier, several kinds of chairman, a university chancellor and latterly a lord. And although I now have hearing aids in both ears and my heart is ticking courtesy of a pacemaker, I have made it to my mid-80s.

Before the tsunami, I had always thought of myself as a sort of ridiculous male Mary Poppins, the eternal optimist whose glass is always half full. But, after the loss of my daughter and granddaughter, nothing would ever be the same again.