My husband John's and my breaks are often very culture heavy. He cannot pass a museum without venturing inside, so we tend to see a lot of architecture and so-called places of interest.
When I was a boy, I took over the shed at the bottom of the garden and displayed fossils and potsherds and coins in it and proudly called it my 'museum'. I charged people to come in, and my most prized possession was a Saracen shield dating from the Crusades.
I'm in a museum. I'm a relic.
Anybody great, we're all interested in the relics. If you found an unfinished Gauguin, you'd still want to see it.
I like historical things; I like researching things.
I was always fascinated, even as a child, by antiques and ancient times. I always felt I should have been born in the 17th or 18th century. They really had a big stone castle with authentic furniture.
If I were to say I'm looking for treasure, people would come up with the money. When I say I'm looking for a historic wreck, they're not interested.
Archives can be inspiring but overwhelming. You have to forget them - especially when the whole world has been knocking them off. Everyone shops the same flea markets.
The British Museum was our first real museum, the property of the public rather than the monarch or the church.
Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.
When I'm on the road, museums end up being a place I go to in different cities that is always interesting. Museums and independent record stores.
We were totally unprepared for such a large quantity of visitors, and in view of the preservation of the antiquities they being very crowded and in poor preservation, we were obliged to refuse admission until some preparation was made to safeguard the objects.
To those of you who seek lost objects of history, I wish you the best of luck. They're out there, and they're whispering.
The looters are using Google Earth, too. They're coming in with metal detectors and geophysical equipment. Some ask me to confirm sites.
There are two types of collector, I think. There are those who are quite academic, and get into the archaeology of finding the earliest example of a particular idea. Then there are those interested in what's new.
The 19th century became the age of the museum. Objects were scrambled for, specimens seized, and friezes and antiques grasped.
I love anything to do with history.
If the picture needs varnishing later, I allow a restorer to do that, if there's any restoring necessary.
One of my great passions is the collection of historical trivia.
We've found that patterns of site looting have increased between 500 and 1000 percent since the start of the Arab Spring. Now this is a problem as old as human beings. People were looting tombs 5,000 years ago in Egypt as soon as people were buried, but the problem is only getting worse and worse.
On many accounts, Cornwall may be regarded as one of the most interesting counties of England, whether we regard it for its coast scenery, its products, or its antiquities.
The thing about me is that my secret passion is history.
I'm a history nut.
There seems to be more abiding interest in unearthing old memos abroad than there is here.
I'm not a builder of buildings, I'm a builder of collections.
