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I've always been sort of interested in the rural countryside. Things happen out there that are very strange to city dwellers.

Britain still has the most reliably beautiful countryside of anywhere in the world. I would hate to be part of the generation that allowed that to be lost.

When the weather's good, there's no better place to be than the British countryside.

That image of the countryside being a threatening place still exists. People continue to resist the challenge of learning about aspects of life they don't understand.

They don't have a lot of crime in the countryside other than theft. But every once in a while, things turn ugly, and when they turn ugly, they turn very ugly.

All over the land are vast and handsome pastures, with good grass for cattle, and it strikes me the soil would be very fertile were the country inhabited and improved by reasonable people.

If there was the opportunity to climb a mountain, or to go ballooning, or some adventurous activity, I would always be keen to do it. I loved the countryside.

The countryside, particularly, is very good for my head.

It is unthinkable to have a British countryside that doesn't have actual functioning farmers riding tractors, cows in fields, things like that.

As our cities have developed, they've built sometimes small villages or communities that were in place. And we've taken for granted all of that child care, the neighbourliness, the help that you get from people nearby.