London has fine museums, the British Library is one of the greatest library institutions in the world... It's got everything you want, really.

The climate suits me, and London has the greatest serious music that you can hear any day of the week in the world - you think it's going to be Vienna or Paris or somewhere, but if you go to Vienna or Paris and say, 'Let's hear some good music', there isn't any.

It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.

I work three days at home, and two days in the British Library or the London Library, just to get out of the house and hide from the children.

If I'm researching something strange and rococo, I'll go to the London Library or the British Library and look it up in books.

It's not just that we are dependent on the natural world for our food and for the very air we breathe-which is, of course, the case-and that the very richness of the natural world continues to provide us with all kinds of assistance.