I'm absolutely delighted if people think of me as a reliable purveyor of quality period stuff.

My wife likes history and documentaries, but I'm not so keen on them. I generally go and do some work if there's one of those on.

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

I was getting rewarded for writing well, from about the age of five or six. A teacher would say, "Look what Andrew has written," and I thought, "Maybe I could be a writer."

I would love it if anyone gave me the job of adapting 'The Great Gatsby,' but nobody ever does.

Taking the humour out of Dickens, it's not Dickens any more.

Othello' is the most domestic of Shakespeare's tragedies and the one that's likely to strike a personal note with a lot of people watching it.