I'm for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.

f they'd been working with Alec Guinness, for instance, they wouldn't have known they were born if they'd not towed the line!

Art comes out of art; it begins with imitation, often in the form of parody, and it's in the process of imitating the voice of others that one comes to learn the sound of one's own.

My experience came before most of you were born. My school was a state school in Leeds and the headmaster usually sent students to Leeds University but he didn't normally send them to Oxford or Cambridge. But the headmaster happened to have been to Cambridge and decided to try and push some of us towards Oxford and Cambridge. So, half a dozen of us tried - not all of us in history - and we all eventually got in. So, to that extent, it [The History Boys] comes out of my own experience.

I have never understood disliking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.

I don't talk very well. With writing, you've time to get it right. Also I've found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn't write no one would want me to talk anyway.

You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.