STEVEN KNIGHT

I think there's a tendency in England, when you look at the past, to either have upper middle class period drama with its own rules, or if you're going to look at working class people, you have to do that in a particular 'Isn't it a shame, aren't they oppressed' way, or it's treated comically.

I've had more reaction to 'Peaky' than anything. People react really intensely.

I've been banging on about doing stuff in Birmingham for years and years, and everyone says 'We can't, it's the accent thing.' For some reason it's a very difficult accent to get right, harder even than Geordie.

There are always people who are doing things that don't fit the official accounts.

I never map things out in advance. It would be better if I did and more economical in terms of time, but I've found that if you work out a plot line from beginning to end, at the beginning it becomes very rational.

I just don't like cinemas very much. And when I do see a film it depresses me.

I think an under-recognized fact is that TV has changed because the screens have, we now have these massive screen in our homes... so it's worth making your show look good.

Any genre as it's called, I think can be quite reductive in terms of what a film is, because I think there is an eagerness to put in any film, in anybody's work, to give it a genre title and I think as a consequence of that, the film starts to obey the rules of the genre.

The problem with prequels is you're limiting yourself as to where it can go.

The whole process of filmmaking can be chaotic, but if you can have an enthusiastic cast, you're pretty much there.

In Britain, when the working class are summoned for fiction, it's 'isn't it a shame, isn't it a pity, isn't it awful, the terribly poor things... ' whereas from within, it's nothing like that. It's fantastic, it's glamorous, it's terrible and good the same as it is for everybody.

Any attempt to recreate a world of 1814, or 100 years before that - I think it's important to understand that the people of the time had a different concept of what reality was. Their reality was much more haunted.

Locke' was sort of myself trying to find out if you could give yourself the maximum number of obstacles to make enough drama and seeing if you could do it.

There are so many rules about how you make a film and so many conventions that you can and can't do. I think people have forgotten that they are just rules that were invented for convenience - sometimes it is more convenient not to obey the rules.

Part of the reason for doing 'Peaky Blinders,' apart from the fact that it was a personal story and I've always wanted to do it, was what was great I felt is that Birmingham is probably the least fashionable city in Britain.

It's such a gift when you know who you're writing for and you know that that actor is capable of so much that you can relax a bit.

I remember going to Birmingham City matches as a kid and there were these other kids in Small Heath who had their own odd, partly Scouse accent.

Taboo' certainly isn't a commentary on other types of period drama. It's just a different way of tackling one.

It's really important to me that 'Peaky Blinders' went down so well in Birmingham. Apparently the audience share in the West Midlands was double that of any other region.

I think the best research is people you meet and things that they say, rather than second hand accounts of something. I think when you meet someone and talk to them, then you get the real thing and that's what you can use. That's the material you can actually put on the page.

From the age of about 8 to the age of about 15, I was obsessed with Native Americans.

I am definitely going to continue directing, but I am always going to try to explore new ways of making films. It really is possible to make films in different ways.

I think the East India Company represents what we would think of as a very modern approach to the world where everything was counted, every penny was counted.

Horses do sense things way before people.

Manchester's history is cotton and wool. Birmingham's is iron and steel.