The engine of ancient society was religion but the engine of contemporary society, as I see it, is advertising.

The hoop is there to remind us not to jump through it, not to submit to someone else's control.

Practical! On Wednesday afternoons I could be practically anything. What's up?

In the fairy tale the painting represents the here and now. The book is actually divided into five sections, through which the key character, the muse, leads us.

I took lots of photographs and had planned to write a treatise on how it worked, but I quickly got bored with that idea and wrote a scientific fairy tale instead.

I started by looking at what others had done before me. You see, over the years there have been attempts by many different people to reconstruct the chariot.

As I was working I noticed that the way I designed the differential gearing actually created a spare drive that sat directly below the emperor's feet, or where they would be if he were to sit in the chariot.