A student who sent her dissertation to Sir David Attenborough was left stunned when she received a handwritten letter in response from the man himself.
Emma Tait, 21, posted a copy of her work hoping her research and findings would be of interest to the popular 93-year-old broadcaster.
The events management student was anticipating to be contacted by the historian's PA so she was "total shock" to discover a handwritten letter drop through the letterbox just four days later.
Sir David wrote: 'Dear Emma Tait, Thank you for sending me a copy of your dissertation. I look forward to reading it. Yours sincerely, David Attenborough."
Emma, an events management student from Ryton, said: "I love his documentaries and with climate change being such a relevant topic at the moment I thought it was worth sending it off.
"I found his production company's address online and just thought I'd send it on the off chance. I was possibly expecting a letter from his PA but definitely not a handwritten letter from him.
"I was so confused at first because I never get post, let alone handwritten mail."
Stunned by the note, Emma decided to share it with her followers on Twitter and got an overwhelming response with almost 20,000 retweets.
It was a double celebration for Emma who has also discovered she is graduating from Liverpool John Moores University with first class honours.
"It is a sign that all my hard work has paid off," she said.
"I am so happy David is going to read my work and I hope he enjoys reading it.
"My family is so proud and they can't believe it as much as me."
Now Emma is hoping to receive another reply from the Planet Earth presenter after reading her dissertation titled - 'An evaluation of the environmental polices and practices implemented by UK music festivals'.
She said: "I found that not enough was done to minimise the impacts that festival events create.
"This frustrated me as music events are a huge part of the event industry and have long lasting and damaging environmental impacts.
"I didn’t know how to begin in making a difference so I sent my work to David Attenborough in hope that could be a start.
"It'd be great to get some feedback from him. I'm such a big fan of his and I'd be interested to read his thoughts on my findings.
"But to receive a letter in the first place is amazing. There can't be many people who get a letter from him nowadays."
