BOOKS The books I go back to with most sheer appreciation and involvement would still be Dostoevsky’s.

Why? Interiority: there’s a big echo chamber there. And he’s a hugely involving writer. Not easy, but he pulls you through.

So The Idiot, where the first 250-odd pages all take place within six hours, and you look up at the end of it and think “Good grief!” All of that space in the book and it’s just a very short space of time and you haven't noticed.

POETRY Auden still means a great deal. I don’t think there’s one particular poem, but his collected works I still pull down to browse.

Among more recent people, it’s still Geoffrey Hill I most deeply admire, particularly his recent The Orchards of Syon.

MUSIC My favourite composer is Bach. I love the St Matthew Passion and the cello suites and his double oboe and violin concerto.

FILMS Am I allowed to say The Railway Children? Only joking, though I do like it.

It’s Russian again, I’m afraid. Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev, about a medieval icon painter in Russia, at one end of the spectrum.

For sheer enjoyment, it would probably be a toss-up between Casablanca and Some Like It Hot.

TV I watch very little television now, very little. And I don’t think there’s anything on television now that I’d make a specific effort to be in for.