When my children were small and used to play together, be creative, and were just in that innocent bubble.

Sending off the final draft of my latest novel.

Those years from 1953 to 1975 were extremely happy years for me. I did many adventurous activities. I got deeply involved in these aid programs for the people of the Himalayas. I had a nice family, we took our family into the out-of-doors, we camped and we swam and we clambered around the hills. For me, it was a very full and a very happy existence.

The morning after the opening of Hamlet in New York in 2000. The reviews were good and I actually punched the air – a very un-Simon Russell Beale thing to do.

Acting, when you don’t want to do it or you disagree with everything, is almost like having sex with someone you don’t like. I had one experience like that on stage, in a terrible version of The Cherry Orchard. I put on a wig, dark-coloured contacts and just hoped no one would recognise me.

Warm and bubbly.

I spend most money on my garden.

When I had a bicycle accident when I was 24. I was on a bridge going down; the bicycle broke and I smashed to the ground, face first. I broke my jaw and my teeth, and had to have plastic surgery. It all took half a year and then, funnily enough, I got my first big job – a TV series – with what I thought of then as this big, ugly scar.

My vain side would like to be remembered as someone who did good for others in some way. But I would be happy if my children remembered me.