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Is 'The Wind in the Willows' a children's book? Is 'Alice in Wonderland?' Is 'Treasure Island?' These are masterpieces which we read with pleasure as children, but with how much more pleasure when we are grown-up.

Books were my window on the world. Growing up at the Elephant and Castle, which was very rough, my paradise was the library.

London has always provided the landscape for my imagination. It becomes a character - a living being - within each of my books.

It would have been very easy to drift into writing a non-fiction book so by taking it away from Nottingham I forced myself to imagine much more of it.

When I was a teenager, the number one book I was most obsessed with was 'Gone with the Wind.'

I have begun the 'History of England' by Mr. Hume. It seems to me very interesting, though it is necessary to recollect that it is a Protestant who has written it.

I've also worked hard portraying an Ireland which is fast disappearing. Ireland was a very depressed and difficult place in the 1980s, and I've tried to include that in the script. I worked really hard to find the heart of the book.

I always loved reading. Growing up, my favorite book was 'A Child's Garden of Verses,' by Robert Louis Stevenson.

I love those books like 'Gone with the Wind,' the huge, sweeping family sagas.