“Beautifully shot, impeccably paced, it was a clear, unrelenting look at the National Trust, its friends and enemies, and it makes you want to burn your passport and beg the Luftwaffe to have another go.”

Facts are what pedantic, dull people have instead of opinions.

The reason that chefs become chefs is that they’re not allowed into rooms with windows.

My father was a film-maker. He always said he wanted to go like Humphrey Jennings, the legendary director who stepped backwards over a cliff while framing a better shot.

The interesting adults are always the school failures, the weird ones, the losers, the malcontents, this isn’t wishful thinking. It’s the rule.

America didn’t bypass or escape civilization. It did something far more profound, far cleverer: it simply changed what civilization could be.

The truth and the facts aren’t necessarily the same thing. Telling the truth is the object of all art; facts are what the unimaginative have instead of ideas.

Television gives us the gift to see ourselves as we’d like to be seen.

Science fiction is never about the future, in the same way history is rarely about the past: they’re both parable formats for examining or commenting on the present.

Breakfast is everything. The beginning, the first thing. It is the mouthful that is the commitment to a new day, a continuing life.

Sport is how poor kids from poor countries pass through the eye of the needle to riches and recognition.

Americans think the only funny Brits are John Cleese, Benny Hill and whoever makes our toothpaste. They’re not laughing with us, they are laughing at us.

You either get the point of Africa or you don’t. What draws me back year after year is that it’s like seeing the world with the lid off.

I don’t know how long a child will remain utterly static in front of the television, but my guess is that it could be well into their thirties.

Nobody ever forgets their first night in the bush. It’s among the precious, meagre handful of life firsts that remain indelible.

I still secretly believe that afternoons are the time for the test card and you shouldn’t watch television when the sun is out.

He (Jeremy Clarkson) is the last man standing on the beach commanding the glaciers’ melt waters to go back

If you want an enemy, the soul (nafs) is sufficient. If you want advice, death is sufficient.

I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies, but that isn’t very difficult.

Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies.

Always forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.

Love makes money-grabbing seem contemptible; love makes class prejudice impossible; love makes selfish ambition a thing to be despised; love converts enemies into friends.

You have to be a friend to yourself. You know, ’cause if you’re not a friend to yourself, you’re an enemy to yourself and if someone’s a friend of everybody they are an enemy to themselves.

If you want to make enemies, try to change something.

When the enemy comes with shame and blame, tell him to go measure the distance from east to west and get back to you.