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" I am 74 now. Looking back, I have a sense of not really being in control of my career. I just went where it took me. "

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" The BBC does a sterling job, but I'd like to see it do more. ITV does four arts programmes a year; it used to be 28. At least Sky, with its two arts channels, is trying. "

" We got a copy of the 'New Statesman' at my grammar school in Wigton, Cumbria, in the 1950s. It sat mint fresh every week on the library table, with two or three other bargain-offer magazines. The 'Statesman' came out of the unimaginable Great World. I started to read it then and have pegged along ever since. "

" In 1997, the Labour government set out to strengthen funding for the arts - and achieved it. "

" Once, the arts were opera, ballet, classical music, and everything else deemed highbrow. "

" The abolition of slavery was driven by the King James Bible. It gave slaves a common language and purpose. "

" One of the great things about making 'Reel History' was meeting British people from all over the class system. It made me realise that London is a different country. "

" If you look at the creative economy in this country, it's per capita way bigger than any other in the world. "

" It's amazing that Sky is the only place that has two dedicated arts channels. The BBC is doing very well... but why don't they do more? "

" Is it rather stupid and dangerous to take Magna Carta so much for granted, as many of us seem to do, and to think of this attitude as 'very English?' "

" It is very difficult for middle-aged, institutionalised males who have done so well out of subsidy - and, fair play, given much back - to realise that there is a time to be a well-heeled revolutionary. "

" Dame Barbara Cartland was an endearing eccentric, and when I interviewed her, she wanted me to listen to her dictating to her secretary one of those romantic novels that she turned out fortnightly. "

" Autobiographical fiction is very tricky. "

Autobiographical

" I love writing, and I love making arts programmes. "

" The class barricades have been stormed by the forces of a broad culture, which is made up of clusters of individuals who have decided for themselves what they will be in society. "

" I was the only BBC graduate trainee in 1961 interested in arts broadcasting. I knew I wanted to write, and I had to make a living. "

" I was brought up in a strong working-class community by working-class parents and relations until I was 18, and that's what I really am. Now all sorts of things have been added, but that's what I am. "

" There's a lot of hours in the week if you use them properly. "

" In the 1990s, from the estates of Scotland came the phenomenon of Irvine Welsh. 'Trainspotting' demanded its place not only in the high ranks of contemporary fiction but as a describer of a Britain that literally and metaphorically was in a deep mess. "

" Miliband failed us, his Labour supporters. And Labour will now, because of him, be in a disaster zone for a long time. "

" What artists are doing, and what people who are receiving the arts are doing, is entering into this agreement to occupy a parallel world. The parallel world is ever-expanding. We used to think that it existed only for people who were wealthy, well-born, or educated. It isn't like that. "

" Work is a great blotter up. It stops you thinking, which is useful. No, it stops you feeling. "

" It is in our culture that we don't want to admit that our culture is good. "

" Sometimes, you're just moved by people's journeys. "

" Like university science departments, the arts have shown how they can earn their way and point to an economically newborn future for this country. They show that the U.K. could be a prime provider of imaginative riches and intellectual adventure, which I think are the two great prizes of the 21st century. "

" I'd been writing fiction for 50 years, since I was 19. And when you write fiction, it becomes a way of thinking: there's always a novel around. The strange thing was that after 'Remember Me,' there wasn't. "

" More people go to Tate Modern than watch the Arsenal. "

" Well, I don't think I'm good-looking... I know people who are good-looking, and I'm not good-looking. "

" You ask 20 of your friends how English and American democracy came about. None of them would say that Anglicanism or Protestantism had anything to do with it. But it was crucial to it! "

" The idea that popular arts were shallow by definition and the traditional arts were profound was dead, I thought, and I wanted to prove it. "

" Few places on earth have been as affectionately alchemised into literature as the Lake District. "