The fact is, I loved being English. I was very happy to be turned into an English schoolboy.

I like plays where people talk a lot. Conversation is sustained. Argument is sustained.

I'm so grateful to grab hold of something that wants to be a play. It doesn't happen very often. I don't have unwritten plays waiting for their turn.

I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself.

Obviously, you would give your life for your children, or give them the last biscuit on the plate. But to me, the trick in life is to take that sense of generosity between kin, make it apply to the extended family and to your neighbour, your village and beyond.

From as long as, literally as far back as I can remember I've liked puns, word jokes, I can literally recall looking at a comic at the age of six or seven and I remember what I enjoyed and what it was precisely and how the joke worked.

I enjoy writing dialogue; it comes naturally to me.