I like the idea of trying to do decent work and having it seen by a lot of people.

I had wanted to make a film about World War II for some time, but I didn't really want to do something that was set in the trenches, so to speak.

For behaviorist films, that's been much more useful - the change of technology - but for my kind of films, doing them on film is much better, because it's more beautiful.

I'd always wanted to do something about the Second World War, but I didn't want to do another combat film, whether it was air, land, or sea.

I just wondered when I was doing the Bond, whether I'd learned a lot of bad habits that I couldn't rid myself of.

But you kind of... when I was sent out to find these children - I mean I was the researcher, humble researcher - I was just existing on the margins of society because Granada very clearly wanted to prove the point that the social inequalities were alive... were rampant.

Your great country is wonderful at stealing pieces of history and using it for its own purposes, so there didn't seem to be anything particularly unusual about it but the English were incredibly exercised about it.

When I joined Granada - which, you don't want to start crying about these things, but Granada was a very, very hot place to be, it was my good fortune to be there at that time - the BBC was firmly asleep.

I've never much been interested in doing films that no one gets to see.