When I became the chair of the British Film Institute, I didn`t understand how much of my time would be taken up with trying to make a case for the British Film Institute: what it`s for, why it exists, why it needs its money.

I had never thought of myself as a director and found out that I was not. I am a writer who was able to direct the films that I write.

The only lesson to extract from any civil war is that it`s pointless and futile and ugly, and that there is nothing glamorous or heroic about it. There are heroes, but the causes are never heroic.