It's really a lovely feeling to write knowing that failure is taken off the table because if it's bad you just never show it to anyone.

To what degree are historians chroniclers of the truth and to what degree are they just novelists, frankly?

I had no intention of providing any answers or solutions, because you'd only look a fool, but I did want to talk about what it's like to be in a state where you're wondering. And perhaps I was also receptive to the fact I was entering middle age and those thoughts come - to pretend that they don't come is just crazy.

I just try and do something good. But as a writer, you're slightly out of control.

The stuff that I have perhaps become known for that's based on fact, and English statesmen shouting at each other all the time, doesn't entirely represent who I am. I am not a politics wonk.

I don't want to direct. I have no directing ambition whatsoever. And as long as I meet filmmakers like Tom Hooper, Stephen Frears, and others who allow that collaboration, I can't see why I would ever want to direct.

You can only do the best you can in the minute that you're doing it.