If not exactly raging against the dying of the light, I was at least a little cross with it.

Benedict is bumbly, sweet, affable; the nicest man you've met.

The question I ask myself is: have I really just become a squeamish middle-aged man, or has something happened to the horror genre that shows a growing appetite for watching torture, or at least a desire to explore it on film? And if so, why would that be? I can't pretend I know. I just know I don't like it.

At school I briefly wanted to be a palaeontologist, but I was no good at chemistry and physics.

When I was your age — about, ooh, a thousand years ago — I loved a good bedtime story. The Three Little Sontarans. The Emperor Dalek's New Clothes. Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday, eh? All the classics.

Even when I was a child, I always wanted to be older. I realised just in time that it's a mistake and to enjoy my youth while I had it.

Europe is so much the home of Horror, with its myths of vampires, werewolves, witchcraft and the undead, yet it's like those myths were exported to Hollywood, leaving Europe the room to develop a new tradition as a way of processing its traumas, particularly the two world wars.