Brain power improves by brain use, just as our bodily strength grows with exercise. And there is no doubt that a large proportion of the female population, from school days to late middle age, now have very complicated lives indeed.

When Christians start thinking about Jesus, things start breaking down, they lose their faith. It's perfectly possible to go to church every Sunday and not ask any questions, just because you like it as a way of life. They fear that if they ask questions they'll lose their Christ, the very linchpin of their religion.

I don't think you can tell the objective truth about a person. That's why people write novels.

Watching a whole cluster of friends, and my own mother, die over quite a short space of time convinced me that purely materialist 'explanations' for our mysterious human existence simply won't do - on an intellectual level.

In my family we've always been into ethical stuff and recycling.

The first time I listened to Coldplay, I was at a train station in Paris with my family on holiday. I put on 'Clocks' on my discman, and I fell in love.

I filmed 'Albatross' before I got 'Downton.' It's a coming-of-age movie about this girl who leaps into this family's life, like a whirlwind. She's ballsy and brash and wonderful, it was such an amazing character to play.

If you look at the literature of the 19th century, you get things like Kafka and Dostoevsky, who basically write about feeling bored and alienated. That's because we lost contact with the important things in life like work that you enjoy, or the garden, nature, your family and friends.