British audiences tend to want to see their own lives reflected on TV, whereas American audiences are quite aspirational and enjoy high-concept shows that show them lives that are perhaps slightly more exciting than they aspire to.
Contrast that with the call of the Liberal Democrats in April, when they were prepared to call upon the British people to participate in a 24-hour strike. It shows how far to the right the Labour Party's gone.
Intellectuals, academics, writers and poets were an important force in the early groups of volunteers. They had the means to get to Spain and were accustomed to travelling, whereas very few workers had left British shores.
So the books have a greater appeal to a British audience, but that hasn't stopped them making best-seller lists in places like Brazil, Japan and at least a dozen other countries.
I think I must be the only British actor who's played both Stalin and Trotsky. I need to play Lenin so I can make it a triptych.
I'm highly political. I spend an awful lot of time in the U.S. trying to influence decision-makers. But I don't feel in tune with British politics.
Any criticism of Thatcher throws a dangerously absurd light on the entire machinery of British politics. Thatcher's name must be protected, not because of all the wrong that she had done, but because the people around her allowed her to do it.
The real problem at the moment is that the banks - because of their existing culture, which is frankly anti-business, obsession with short-term trading profits, not focusing on the long term - are throttling the recovery of British industry.
I am a subject of the British Crown, but whenever I have to choose between the interests of England and Canada it is manifest to me that the interests of my country are identical with those of the United States of America.
What brought the British to the Gambia in the first place - which was bigger than it is now - was trade in ivory because the Gambia had a lot of elephants. They wiped out all the elephants and ended up selling Africans.
The joy of my career is I've been very blessed to be able to be an actor in major films, television, theater, and also British radio. In fact, my dream as an actor when I started out was to be able to work in all the media. Thankfully, that's what I'...
I've always felt, with 'The Iliad,' a real frustration that it's read wrong. That it's turned into this public school poem, which I don't think it is. That glamorising of war, and white-limbed, flowing-haired Greek heroes - it's become a cliched, Bri...
I would like to tell our American, British and Spanish friends that the Iraqi crisis is not a problem between the United States and France, but between those who want to move forward in the logic of war and the international community.
Damien: How many British soldiers in the country, Tim? Tim: Too many. Damien: How many? Teddy: About ten thousand, Damien. Damien: Ten Thousand. Tans, artillery units, machine-gun car, cavalry... Teddy: And many more besides. What's your point, Damie...
...British appeasement of the Palestinian Arabs led directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews [in the Holocaust] who might otherwise have found refuge in Palestine.
You’re British, you’re a priest, you’re a medical doctor, you can handle a rifle, you know Morse Code, and most importantly of all, you’re a fucking pain in the ass – so off you go!
An enormous semiofficial drug-smuggling operation was established in order to improve Britain's unfavorable balance of payments with China—the direct result of the British love of tea.
Jack had been the love of her life and he was gone. It seemed now that there had never been bad times, though she knew that wasn’t true.
She tried to focus on the element of riddle or at least puzzle contained in the letter and ignore the sense of doom that was sweeping through her like clouds rolling to the shore over open water.
If the nature of the world is revealed to man through religion, then gardens, as places for contemplation, should symbolise the perfection of nature.
I wrote 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' at the age of 30 under intense, unshared personal stress and in extreme privacy. As an intelligence officer in the guise of a junior diplomat at the British Embassy in Bonn, I was a secret to my colleagues,...
