[citation needed] Alexander Desmond Hawkins was born at East Sheen, Surrey, and educated at Cranleigh School.
He became literary editor of Purpose and of The New English Weekly, and T. S. Eliot made him fiction chronicler of his critical journal The Criterion.
Working extensively for the BBC as a freelance, particularly on the Sunday programme Country Magazine and on the daily War Report, he was asked to join the Corporation's staff in Bristol in 1945 and soon became a features (i.e. documentary) producer.
What followed eventually became the BBC Natural History Unit, having its origins in radio early in 1946 when Hawkins designed a programme called The Naturalist, with the curlew's song as a signature tune.
His favourite choice was Schubert's Octet in F major[3] He died on 6 May 1999, the same day as Johnny Morris, the TV personality he discovered while they both lived in the village of Aldbourne, Wiltshire.