“Let me give you an idea of Fifties Britain. The war had ended ten year...” — Mary Quant Quote

Let me give you an idea of Fifties Britain. The war had ended ten years before, and most people had returned to their gardens and allotments hoping life would revert to how it was before the hostilities.

In the old parts of Nice, the family tables are out in the cobbled streets so that you can't drive past. They insist you join them at midnight on a hot July evening. So that's just what you do, abandoning the car.

I've always loved painting and drawing. I wish I'd developed it more and exhibited.

I divide my time between all the mud and open space in Surrey and the social life and work in London, particularly Chelsea, which still has the same village feel that it had in the swinging Sixties.

It frustrates me that Britain can't make something like 'CSI' or 'The Sopranos'. Instead, British TV puts soap in primetime while every other civilized nation leaves it in daytime. Viewers should be more demanding.

The Vikings colonized Britain, and a lot of our modern day towns are named after Viking names that settled these big towns.

Britain has no divine right to be one of the richest countries in the world.

I grew up in Yorkshire, which is like the Texas of Britain. It's a proud free state and not always liked by the other counties in Britain.

I grew up in kind of the last generation of Canadians who thought things that were happening in Britain were more important, almost, than what was happening in Canada. And my mother was fervently of that opinion.