I saw a ghost once, about 20 years ago. It took the form of someone coming out of a sleeping body and sitting at the foot of the bed.

I can remember picking up weighty tomes on the history of science and the history of philosophy and reading those when I was small.

I don't find myself interesting as a person and the details I find boring, quite frankly. You could sum it up in a few words or sentences really: came from nothing. Self-educated. Luck. Energy. Curiosity. Ambition. That's it. Nothing at all can illuminate the work as far as I can tell.

I enjoyed reading and learning at school, and at university I enjoyed extending my reading and learning. Once I left Cambridge, I went to Yale as a fellow. I spent two years there. After that, George Gale made me literary editor of 'The Spectator.'

Perfect Sense' is a film about love and catastrophe, which I hope is a powerfully romantic and emotional take on the apocalyptic sub-genre. Its aim is to be a minimalist concept movie - where seismic events occur in simple ways that ask the audience to use their imagination.

In a great many stories that deal with time travel, there's usually somebody who knows how time travel works. They lay out the rules.

If the 20th century was marked by travel - planes in flight - then the events of 9/11 ushered in the age of the burning aftermath.

There's probably a little more creative freedom in cable versus network, a little less of a committee looking over everyone's shoulder, but it depends on the network; it depends on the show; it depends on who the head writer or show runner is and what track record they have.