My Albert married his Maisie Brown as he said he would. But I think she never took to me, nor I to her for that matter. Perhaps it was a feeling of mutual jealousy.

It's what I'll be singing in the morning. It won't be God Save the Ruddy King or All Things bleeding Bright and Beautiful. It'll be Orange and Lemons for Big Joe, for all of us.

Always write your ideas down however silly or trivial they might seem. Keep a notebook with you at all times.

I think people are more in contact now with the consequences of war than they've been for a very long time. And that's what amazes me when sometimes politicians seem to forget their history. They don't look and re-learn about what has happened before. Maybe they haven't got the memory, maybe they're already too young, but you can see how we become puffed up, and how we as a nation rise so quickly if we're not careful.

Theatre can transform a child's life, just as an early cultural experience whether with opera, ballet, music or art is a wonderful thing because it opens the door to a life-long experience, a life-long enjoyment.

Characters are the key to a good book. It took me several novels to comprehend that.

I don't know, but I do think that everyone has a story to tell. The question is, can they find the voice and the confidence to tell it? We lack the encouragement as young people to believe this; we very often think that writing is for clever people, which it isn't.