A Young Admirer Marks a Milestone
Many individuals admire Sir David Attenborough for his lifelong dedication to animals and natural history. Among them is Max Evans-Browning, a six-year-old boy who considers himself Sir David's "biggest fan." To commemorate the broadcaster's 100th birthday, Max has drawn 100 of his favourite animals.
The majority of this artistic project was completed last year when Max gained some social media attention for carefully selecting and hand-drawing 99 of Attenborough's favourite animals—one for each year of his life.
To complete the collection, Max recently drew a platysaurus attenboroughi, commonly known as Attenborough's flat lizard, a species named after the esteemed biologist.
Alongside his drawing, Max included a letter addressed to Sir David:
"I wanted to do something special for you, so I chose an animal named after you. I wanted to make it perfect and it took a while, but I hope you like it."
Sir David Attenborough, who has devoted his life to documenting the natural world, celebrates his 100th birthday on Friday. The occasion will be honoured with a week-long celebration on the BBC, highlighting his extensive life's work.
Max, from Penylan, Pembrokeshire, has been a fan of Sir David for as long as he can recall, watching his documentaries nightly before bed since toddlerhood.
Despite the 94-year age difference, Max describes Sir David as his "favourite person" and expressed happiness at the broadcaster reaching this significant milestone.
"When I saw last year he was going to be 99, I said 'why don't we do 99 for him?' And then we did it and it went everywhere and then finally got to him and a message came back," said Max. "So this year, because he's 100, I wanted to add one more on."
The final drawing took Max "all night," according to his mother Samantha, who explained that Max used some of his sister's art supplies to perfect the flat lizard illustration.
Wanting only the best for Sir David, Max and Samantha "disappeared into her room" to use some of her finest pens to make the drawing extra special.
The 99 drawings created for Attenborough's 99th birthday last year spanned eight A3 sheets of paper and took Max four days to complete.
Max's mother, Samantha, shared the drawings on Facebook with a request to help the card reach Sir David, describing it as "her little boy's dream." The post quickly attracted hundreds of shares within 24 hours and received praise worldwide, eventually capturing Sir David's attention.
It was a dream come true for Max, who has since become Britain's youngest zookeeper at Chessington Zoo and gained an Australian pen pal who shares his passion for animals.
Samantha noted that Max has watched all of Sir David's documentaries and owns more animal encyclopedias than she can keep track of.
"You want to be him when you're older don't you?" Samantha asked Max, to which he proudly nodded.
Both remain thrilled after receiving a handwritten letter from Sir David on his previous birthday and hope this latest drawing will elicit another response, while understanding he may have much correspondence to attend to.
Max concluded his letter with a thoughtful safety warning:
"I hope you have the best birthday and be careful blowing out 100 candles on your cake."
