I'm seen as a chronicler of the class system, which I don't think is unfair.

When people are feeling insecure about their jobs and there are cuts to be made, it's hard to put up an argument that the film industry needs funding.

My parents came from different backgrounds. My father's was grander than my mother's, so my mother had... to put up with the disapproval of my father's relations.

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

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.

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."

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