Attenborough was born in Isleworth, Middlesex. His father, Frederick, was a principal at university college, Leicester, where he grew up in the college house. He is the younger brother of the director, producer, and actor Richard Attenborough who died in 2014 and older brother John Attenborough, a motor executive, Alfa Romeo, who died in 2012. During his childhood, he spent most of his time gathering fossils, stones, and natural specimens.
At some point, he offered to supply newts at the University zoology department barely at the age of 11, where he supplied for 3d each. One of his adoptive sisters gives him a piece of prehistorical creatures, Amber, which he would focus on in the future in his program The Amber Time Machine. Attenborough got an influence when he attended a lecture by Grey Owl at De Montfort Hall, Leicester, with his brother, where he advocated about conservation.
He enrolled at Wyggeston Grammar School for boys in Leicester and later on to Clare College, Cambridge, where he had won a scholarship. In college, he studied geology and zoology, where he acquired a degree in natural sciences. The Royal Navy offered him a position at the national service where he spent two years in North Wales and Firth of Forth.
