When you are desperate to get someone who isn't all that interested in you, you lay siege as hard as you can.

The English country house is certainly an icon of British culture.

If you're supposed to be a 'personality,' then you might as well have a personality.

The moment I was introduced to my wife, Emma, at a party I thought, here she is - and 20 minutes later I told her she ought to marry me. She thought I was as mad as a rat. She wouldn't even give me her telephone number - and she wrote in her diary: "A funny little man asked me to marry him."

To me, all success is a delightful surprise, since one can absolutely never predict it.

I think it's always a challenge to adapt something from one medium to another - a novel into a film or a play into a movie or whatever.

I have derived enormous confidence from being a husband and father.