Now the BBC, in a co-production with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, has compiled Shooting the Century, a wonderful history of just one of the genres that descend from the Lumieres’ ur-films: newsreel.Like a lot of the inventions we think of as typically “modern”, the newsreel is older than most people would think. Their key breakthrough was the idea of driving film through a camera, stopping it at intervals when a frame of film was in the “gate”. The mechanism that allowed them to do this was borrowed from the “presser foot”, which moves cloth through a sewing machine.
On 28 December 1895, in the basement of the Grand Cafe in rue Scribe in Paris, they showed the first 10 short films: recognisably the precursors of modern film. Disastrously, he failed even to patent his invention in France.

As a result, the honour, and profit, of inventing cinema films went to two manufacturers of photographic equipment, the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumiere. He discouraged those who wanted him to persevere, and even wanted to invest money in developing the moving picture. What he had invented, to be precise, was a peepshow in which one person could view a moving image. In 1894, Thomas Alva Edison, perhaps the greatest inventor of all time, made the sort of silly mistake that lesser mortals make He had come close to inventing the cinema. And if he were ever allowed company, well, I’d thoroughly enjoy his Desert Island Discs (R4):”Soave sia il vento” from Cosi fan tutte, Mozart;”And the Glory of the Lord” from Handel’s Messiah;Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D Minor, Bach;”Malletoba Spank”, Duke Ellington;”Zefiro torne”, Monteverdi;Adagio from String Quartet in C-Major, Schubert;”Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” from Ruckertlieder, Mahler;Symphony No 1, Walton.His luxury was a guitar, and his book, Shifts and Expedients of Camp Life by Lord and Baines.Published in 1882, this will, he is confident, teach him to make a canoe from one bolt of canvas But then, we might never want to escape Well, we can all dream Happy New Year..

He is incapable of being bored or boring.Attenborough spoke about the thrill of being in at the start of television; about his introduction of snooker to the black-and-white screen, “the blue ball is next to the green one”, (in our house it was called “Pot Grey”); of the serendipity of filming wildlife: “When a lady gorilla has her hand on your head, it’s not the moment to go on about the opposable thumb”; of what tremendous fun he would have on his island, visited by birds, by whales, by dolphins.If what passes for civilisation were to collapse, I found myself thinking, and only one man to be saved, it should be him. His voice sounds about 17 years old and belongs to the nicest kind of unquenchably enthusiastic sixth-form prefect. It was extremely silly and very funny.Finally, head-girl Sue Lawley had a most distinguished castaway this week in the person of Sir David Attenborough. The programme ended with Lady Pilar being arrested, and Berkeley solemnly advising listeners to avoid her very naughty, very private passion. She has established a country-house opera festival, but her productions tend to include wintry weather, and the powdery white “snow” she uses has a distinctly Colombian origin.Michael Berkeley quoted this newspaper’s thinly disguised music critic, Michael Flight, whose acute ear recognised that a singer was miming to the recorded voice of Mirella Freni during one such show. Lady Pilar has been twice widowed, both husbands having fallen tragically down carefully oiled staircases. The delicacy with which their situation was established was superb, especially as narrated by Prunella Scales, her soprano warmly clad in sensible tweeds.John Sessions has many voices.