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

We are usually undone by our lack of understanding of ourselves.

In my defence I can only say that her past, too, like mine, like everyone's in fact, was a locked box. Occasionally we allow people a peep, but generally only at the top level. The darker streams of our memories we negotiate alone.

People tend to view history as if it were another planet and think the modern world was invented in 1963. I don't agree.

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

I think American television changed world television in its reinvention of the series.

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.