I think certain periods of history don't get dealt with because I think historians, and it's their job, but they look back and look for patterns. They look for sequences and they look for reasons, and certain periods of history don't fit with the general pattern of 1500 to the 20th century, during which there's the creation of the United States. At this time of 1814, two nations who would eventually become close allies were at war with each other, so it doesn't quite fit.

When I was probably about 10 or 11, and I found it was simply something I could do. When you're at school and you do something and you get praised for it, you think, "Oh, right, well I'll do that." From then on, I always thought I'd be a writer. I thought novels at first, and then I sort of naturally drifted into TV.

It's always good to have a world that people don't know about - a world that hasn't yet been done. It's like treading on fresh snow. You're the first one there.

In other words, when you have someone [like Ridley Scott] with that authority, then you tend to be left alone. But they were good and they're really good people, and I'm a big champion of the BBC and I think that like minds find each other and I think that FX and BBC is a perfect match.

I've realized that the only thing I'm interested in is the performance. If the performance is right, then I'm happy. You offer up the dialogue and then the performance comes around.

I've been writing so much. And what happens with TV is that they split [Taboo] into two blocks, so you get a director that does four and another director that does another four. You commit yourself to seven days a week, for 12 or 13 hour days for a long time. I couldn't really do that.

I think that helps because there has been no formality of friendship, the politeness of friendship, so we can just work directly on the work that's ahead of us [with Tom Hardey].