I think that films or indeed any art work should be made in a way that they are infinitely viewable; so that you could go back to it time and time again, not necessarily immediately but over a space of time, and see new things in it, or new ways of looking at it.

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.

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?

Cinema is not a playground for Sharon Stone.

We live in a time of excess - excess population, excess information.

We all know that we're going to die, but we don't know when. That's not a blessing, that's a curse.

There's no such thing as history, only historians. That's how we know about the past.