Simon Henry KingOBEHonFRPS (born 27 December 1962) is a British naturalist, author, conservationist, television presenter and cameraman, specialising in nature documentaries. King received an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society in 2011.
King has been working in the field of natural history film making for over 30 years. He has credited his media career to his parents, his father being in the television industry and his mother being involved in the music industry.[1]
Early life
King was born in Nairobi, Kenya, to parents John King and Eve King (née Shulman), where King's father worked with the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS) in Nairobi. The family moved to Bristol in the United Kingdom in 1964,[2] when John got a job as a reporter for the BBC's Points West news programme. King's parents separated when he was nine years old, and thereafter he lived with his mother and elder sister, Debbie.
He began his career as a child actor at the age of ten in such television films as The Fox (1973) and Secret Place (1974). In 1976 he accompanied naturalist Mike Kendall in the BBC series Man and Boy, in which they searched the country for Britain's wildlife. All of these were his father's projects.
In 1984, he made his first film for television – "The Willow", a study of the wildlife which surrounds a willow tree. This was broadcast as an edition of the BBC series The World About Us, as was his following film "The Hidden Land", a study of the wildlife which exists around the hotels in Spain's Costa del Sol. He has since gone on to produce more than 80 natural history films as principal cameraman, director, producer and many more as presenter.
Presenting and filming
King made two series of King's Country and a series of King's Country Diary for the BBC. He was also responsible for BBC Two's Christmas dramatised wildlife documentaries including "Rannoch the Red Deer", "Dusk the Badger", "Shadow the Peregrine" and the programmes "Aliya the Asian Elephant" and "Tyto the Barn Owl", which were produced and narrated by his father and won industry awards.
He presented the highly successful six-part series King and Company and A Walk on the Wildside which was two-and-a-half years in the making. Since 1992, King has worked on programmes for the BBC Natural History Unit. His early credits included presenting stints on series such as Nature Detectives and Wild Nights with Simon King, as well as fronting the Unit's occasional live "Watch" broadcasts. He was a regular presenter on BBC Two's Tracks, fronted Watch Out on the same channel and filmed all over the world for Hot Shots, a series which looked at the making of natural history films.
In 2007, it was announced that King and an assistant had been attacked by a rabidcheetah in Kenya while filming for Natural World. They were given rabies jabs and did not develop the disease, although the cheetah itself later died. This attack was documented in the Natural World episode "Toki's Tale."[4]
In 2011, King was part of the camera team for the Disney film, African Cats.
King has filmed a number of instructional videos for Ordnance Survey, with help on using a compass, reading a map and using grid references.[5]
King was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society in 2011. These are awarded to distinguished persons having, from their position or attainments, an intimate connection with the science or fine art of photography or the application thereof.
Personal life
King has three children from his first marriage: Alexander (born 1986), Romy (born 1989) and Greer (born 1995)[6] and one daughter from his second marriage, Savannah (born in August 2006), to his second wife Marguerite Smits van Oyen.[7]
