Quote

I live a perfectly happy and comfortable life in Blair's Britain, but I can't work up much affection for the culture we've created for ourselves: it's too cynical, too knowing, too ironic, too empty of real value and meaning.

I respect and value the ideals of rugged individualism and self-reliance. But rugged individualism didn't defeat the British, it didn't get us to the moon, build our nation's highways, or map the human genome. We did that together. This is the high call of patriotism.

I made, over the years in Cambridge, several very good American friends, and America appeared to me, a land of promise in every sense of that word, a land of freedom from the inhibitions and restrictions that I felt in England.

The Americans love me because I'm so completely unwilling to change my whole Britishness.

I've learned over the years that freedom is just the other side of discipline.

Britain has nurtured me and made me able to make movies that have travelled round the world.

I've always considered myself to be fiercely patriotic. I love Britain - its history and the down-to-earth attitude people have.

There's a particularly British wariness of appearing to try too hard. It's somehow distasteful. Everything should come to us seamlessly and, if you have to work at it, you're somehow a loser.

Tackling deprivation around the world is a moral imperative and firmly in Britain's national interest.

The British tend to shy away from the spotlight. We don't like being singled out in any way, and I think that is something which is important for me to learn to do.