James Brickell

James Brickell has a passion for wild animals and has directed some of the most highly regarded UK presenters in wildlife filming. His TV filming career to date has included the Really Wild Show, Wildlife on One, Big Cat Diary and most recently, the ground-breaking, highly acclaimed series with Sir David Attenborough: Life in Cold Blood (2008). This series won the prestigious best of festival award ‘The Golden Panda’ at Wildscreen (the wildlife film equivalent of the Oscars). James Brickell is a wildlife filmmaker at the prestigious BBC Natural History Unit. His work includes some genuine world-firsts in wildlife filming. 

Inspired by Gerald Durrell, Jacques Cousteaux and Sir David Attenborough, James became fascinated by animals from a young age (he filled his parents’ house with a menagerie of tarantulas, snakes and lizards). An Old Sexeian from Year 7 in Junior House, one of the first boarders in the “new” Coombe House and right through to Year 13, he left Sexey’s and went on to read Zoology, and then followed his dream and joined the BBC Natural History Unit and has since worked with his childhood hero, Sir David Attenborough. During his career he has also directed Steve Backshall, Michaela Strachan, Nick Baker, Simon King and Charlotte Uhlenbroek among others. His work as a filmmaker has taken him all over the world from the jungles of South America to the Mojave Desert, from the Arctic Circle to the West African Plains (and just about everywhere in-between)