I prefer fact to fiction.

If you've ever seen the film In Which We Serve, but it was about a destroyer in the Mediterranean.

When asked what attribute he most admired in human nature, Mahatma Gandhi replied, simply and immediately, 'Courage'. 'Nonviolence', he said, 'is not to be used ever as the shield of the coward. It is the weapon of the brave.

And there are certain things, and they are evident, obviously, without being boring about it, but I mean obviously, the two evident and easy ones being Gandhi and Cry Freedom, there are things which I do care about very much and which I would like to stand up and be counted.

I am passionately opposed to capital punishment, and I have been all my life.

And that is how I employ my time in cinema, saying things about people who I think have touched us in terms of our value judgement and by example.

I don't read a great deal of fiction, to my shame, other than the classics.