Steve Backshall

“Being charged by a furious matriarch elephant certainly had hearts in mouths, as did the snarling spitting Bengal tiger that gave us a fright in India.”

“Baffin Island was extraordinary; one of the most terrifying things I've done.”

“I want to share my passion for the world's beauty and give others new reasons to care.”

“The scariest animal is without doubt human beings. We are the only species that decimates the very environment that we require to live.”

“Dehydration is a serious problem, particularly for young hedgehogs in the summer, so having some water out that they can drink is important.”

“If the world's oceans have had nearly half a billion years with sharks as the apex predators, then the delicate balance of its food webs must rely on their presence in complex ways we cannot possibly predict.”

“The older I've got, the more I've yearned for heritage, for a sense of belonging and coming from somewhere.”

“Hedgehogs need somewhere to hibernate through the winter, but also a place that they can lie out at during the day. So have a few places around your garden that are a bit wild, maybe a log pile, potentially even a hedgehog home, all of which are going to be prime real estate for one of these little guys.”

“My job has changed so much over recent years because of social media. You can now watch a programme and see how the audience respond to certain moments and it was overwhelming to see how people responded to 'Big Blue Live'.”

“Lose the sharks, the mighty, mysterious lords of the deep, and our planet's oceans would be infinitely poorer places.”

“A lot of people think it's insane to swim out in blue water with a great white shark, but my experience tells me I can do it safely. Other people might consider it mad, granted, but then I might think what they do is mad.”

“I grew up on a small holding, it was a great way to grow up and incredibly idyllic. We had a donkey and Barney the guard dog, geese, a duckling that followed my mum around and used to sit in the washing up bowl.”

“My wife Helen is Cornish and both sides of her family are Cornish going back at least a dozen generations. And I envy that and desperately want it for my children.”

“It's going to sound terribly glib and cliched but the more I learn about animals, the more convinced I am that almost all the fears we have about them are unfounded.”

“I'm driven by the sense that there are still parts of the planet that no one knows anything about.”

“My best generic tip, would be to be always thinking of an escape strategy. Always look around you and think 'what if'? That and making sure you are correctly trained and experienced.”

“I was lucky enough to be surrounded by all sorts of animals from a very young age. My sister Jo was much more into the domestic animals - horses and things. I was absolutely fixated on the blackbirds, and the grass snakes in the manure heap and everything that surrounded us.”

“I started climbing in my late teens, but I wasn't passionate about it back then. My first experience was being dragged up peaks by my parents; freezing cold with nothing to see.”

“Several of my books are 'How to' guides, specifically about getting outdoors, giving kids and parents ideas for what to do in the wild world, so they can take them along!”

“All my books draw heavily on my own experiences, and these are not just places I have gone to on holiday, they're locations I know them intimately from lengthy expeditions, most of which have been spent on the hunt for wildlife.”