I always think that if you deal with extremely emotional, even melodramatic, subject matter, as I constantly do, the best way to handle those situations is at a sufficient remove. It's like a doctor and a nurse and a casualty situation. You can't help the patient and you can't help yourself by emoting. And I don't think cinema is intended for therapy, so I object also to that huge, massive manipulation which is perpetrated on the public.

I always think that art is one of the most wonderful exciting curious ways to learn. I have no worries or apologies about art being used as a teaching medium.

Since Caesar, we know his historians are liars. The good writers get read. Bad history doesn't get read.

I have often thought it was very arrogant to suppose you could make a film for anybody but yourself.

Every historian has a vested interest. "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" was not about the Roman but the British empire. What price the truth?

My favourite way of watching the cinema is the biggest possible cinema you can find, with the biggest possible screen, and the loudest possible Dolby - but just me. Nobody else.

An American critic wrote that she would rather be forced to read the New York telephone directory three times than watch the film A Zed and Two Noughts, a third of which was a homage to Vermeer. Conceivably, if you are a list-enthusiast like me, the New York telephone directory might be fascinating, demographically, geographically, historically, typographically, cartographically; but I am sure no compliment was intended.