I don't practise any religion but I am deeply interested in the answers that mankind has come up with to explain the human situation.

Jesus is absolutely at the centre of Western civilisation and part of my fascination with him is, why? What is it about this particular man and his story?

Everything that we have gone through, are going through, and will go through is there in Shakespeare. It is all of human life.

I don't practise any religion but I am deeply interested in the answers that mankind has come up with to explain the human situation.

Shakespeare speaks for the human heart but Dickens speaks for the social man and for injustices.

My mother wanted me to be a teacher. She had this vision of me walking across the quadrangle in an Oxford college wearing my academic gown.

Like many Catholics, I was very affected by the personality of Jesus and that impression, pious as it was, has stayed with me.