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.

What is a week-end? Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey.

It's the gloomy things that need our help, if everything in the garden is sunny, why meddle?

I always loved movies and the cinema; we always used to go to see films as a family.

Most of the soap operas always use the Christmas special to kill huge quantities of their characters. So they have trams coming off their rails, or cars slamming into each other or burning buildings. It's a general clean-out.

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

We live a life that is often spent in crowds - parties, festivals and first nights - so it's nice to avoid them.