I was touched by Sir. Richard Attenborough’s story about why education should not be taken for granted.

Last year, he was granted an honorary degree by the University of Leicester, my alma mater. I never knew he didn’t actually go to college, though I knew he –and his brother David – were Leicester boys. We take education too much for granted, don’t we?

Listen to the first 6 minutes of this and you’ll know what I mean.

Richard Attenborough has a great sense of humor combined with humility. I know this for a fact because I was lucky to interview him while at the BBC, back in 1989 at Capital Radio studios in London. I wrote a post on that, back in 2014.

But this speech gives me more perspective. The man was really educated in the school of life – in the arts, in travel, in acting, in being in front of, and behind a camera. Yet he knows why we should never take knowledge for granted.