For the last episode [of Downton Abbey], you'll need some handkerchiefs. I needed handkerchiefs reading it. It wasn't because it necessarily moved me while reading it, but it was the experience of reading it when I realized it was the last time I was ever going to be reading one of those scripts. That was quite terminal.

A typical Christmas is me shucking oysters. I love them and I always get them in at Christmas.

Certain stories that you want to see resolve in certain ways are, and some aren't, but that's life.

After World War II, the major estates really did collapse.

Everyone at some point in their lives feels excluded and misunderstood.

Young people are so often dissed by the media.

I'd love to retire somewhere like Winchester, where you have one foot on the pavement but a sense of being in the country as well.