An adaptation I was working on of Trollope's 'The Pallisers' has been axed by the BBC... I was also going to do Dickens' 'Dombey and Son' but they've asked me to do 'David Copperfield' instead.

The older I get, the more fun it is to write young people. It's just a holiday from what is becoming old age, really.

I always do like to write love stories, even if they end tragically.

Look at Jane Austen. Her characters derive in a reasonably straight line from fairy tales.

I got quite cross when I heard about Emma Thompson adapting 'Sense and Sensibility.' It was absolutely childish of me, but I thought, 'I should be doing that. They didn't even ask me.' Some mistake, surely.

I remain, however, fairly optimistic for the future of period drama because it's just such a popular thing.

The joy of writing drama is putting yourself into different people's heads.