Knighton Hall is/was the residence of the Vice Chancellor of Leicester University. In the early 1950s, before Leicester got its University charter, it was for a time the residence of Frederick Attenborough the principle of University Collage Leicester, and father of Richard, David and John Attenborough.

I was too young to remember the Attenboroughs, but I did find a cache of fossils in the grounds that I like to think were some of David’s rejects. However, I did meet Richard when he popped in to say hello to my parents in 1966. I was also told that he held me (as a baby) in his arms shortly before his own son, Michael, was born in 1950.