"Through a Window – the sequel to In the Shadow of Man – was written in Bournemouth, in my little attic room at the top of the house. One thing I remember vividly – I was using a laptop by this time. I had just finished the chapter on mothers and infants – all those so loved chimpanzees such as Flo, Olly, Melissa, Passion and so on. I was preparing to go and join my family who were sitting on the lawn on a beautiful summer evening. And I pressed the delete button by mistake! And I could not retrieve it. I felt like bursting into tears, or shouting and screaming. But I had spent the last few hours in a very good place. The ideas and words had come together. So I took a deep breath and started the chapter again. I spent two more hours writing really fast. Completed the whole chapter – and I think it was even better than before!"

"Why was this a shock to anyone? I had to put something that wasn't from 1974 in my list! I really could have picked any Fiery Furnaces album… I came across the Fiery Furnaces when my daughter, who must have been about 13 at the time found 'Ex-Guru' and said to me: ""This is up your street Dad, listen to this"". And she was absolutely right; I immediately devoured their entire back catalogue. With this, I love how the lyrics seem really mundane but are somehow very charming; it goes from being a bit of a racket to being fantastically beautiful. And this is the one with the backwards masking, and I like anything with a bit of backwards masking. I have met Eleanor [Friedberger], but I didn't tell her I was a fan. I'm awful. That's why I don't like meeting people; either I disappoint them, or they disappoint me."

"My first girlfriend used to listen to Joni Mitchell, and the album that she got me into was Court And Spark. I was 15 or 16 when I first heard it, and the acoustic playing is more like a jazzy sort of thing. I found that really cool. “I love her style as a guitarist, and I love the songs on that album, too. They’re quite funny, and they put you in a certain mood, like Free Man In Paris and People’s Parties. I like it a lot more than Blue and a lot more than Hejira, and the other ones that people go on about. It’s just really good. “Nick Drake’s Pink Moon [1972] also deserves a mention as a very important acoustic album for me. Can we have it as a bonus record?"

"As a piece of modern cinema, I would love to mention Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, which I thought was a brilliant, brilliant film. I think in a year that saw Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson have another science fiction film out as well, it was such a great reminder of how smaller, more thoughtful, more intense, grown-up… It’s an example of the combination of those things, in a way, a kind of more science fiction in the vein of 2001, a more cerebral, literally cerebral kind of science fiction film that was and just how beautifully performed it is. Alicia Vikander is amazing in that film. It’s a film that I’ve watched many times because I just, I don’t seem to tire of it. I think it’s excellent."