And in the Second World War, you didn't just read about it in the newspapers because you weren't allowed to read it in the newspapers. It was all censored, you know? So nobody knew what we were doing.

These things don't just come, arrive and settle like a bird picking up a few bits of crumbs. They develop. I think the best word for these things is develop. They develop because of the human beings who just happen to be there at the time.

I was absolutely delighted that those shows have been preserved.

So I find the fascination, the love, the incredible skill and everything to do with acting, writing plays, and doing them, just darling. Lovely. I love actors.

And in the Second World War, you didn't just read about it in the newspapers because you weren't allowed to read it in the newspapers. It was all censored, you know? So nobody knew what we were doing.

I like most of the Humphrey Bogart movies because they had to act then, and they acted very well. Edward G. Robinson is probably the best actor I've ever seen on the movies.

I mean, everyone says Citizen Kane. It isn't that great, anyway. And Orson Welles I knew well, of course. He made other incredible films that no one would let him make, which were much better than Citizen Kane, really.

Accomplishment is such a patronizing, dangerous word, isn't it? I haven't really accomplished anything. The most accomplished thing I've done is to have lived this long - 81.

Well, you know, I was through the whole of the Second World War and saw all my friends killed.

Television has some lovely aspects to it - and some ghastly aspects - but the theater itself was a wonderful invention.

They call it The New Avengers but it's really the old Avengers with new people except for me, looking rather fat and rather old.

But I did an awful lot of work in Hollywood, and in New York for that matter.

The only danger about websites, you know, is people who remember something you did or said thirty or forty years ago, and bring it up against you, so you're going for a job and you don't get it.

Until the year 1967, it was a crime, for which you could be put in prison, to make homosexual love to someone in your own house. If they came in and caught you at it, you could be put into prison. This has changed - I'm talking about England, incidentally.

The radio even weren't allowed to say there was a Holocaust and people were being killed right, left and center in these terrible camps.

It doesn't work that way, you know, because most parts that you think you'd do well, most other people don't. So they offer you something - The Avengers is a good example... I fitted into that because I came from that sort of background. It's not even acting.

And that's what happened to that show. It started ordinary, it started really rather bad. As I said, there was a review that said, really, we think the commercials are better than the show. And then it gradually developed.

I went to acting school, but only for nine months. If you're an actor, you know, don't really need to learn how to do it.

I loved Ingrid Bergman. I sat and saw her on the stage in a theater in the round.

I missed so much of the Swinging Sixties by working. From 1961 to 1969, I got up at 4.30 A.M., a car came for me at 5.30 A.M., and I was taken to our studio at Teddington or Elstree, and we filmed until I got home at 9.30 P.M., five days a week.

I really think I'd have enjoyed the life of a Regency buck.

I take great pride in recalling that I could open in a play on Broadway or in London's West End and fill a theatre on the strength of my name - Steed's name.

I'm not afraid of death. What's to fear? Once you're dead, that's it. Nothing. I don't believe in heaven or hell. That's baloney. What matters is the here and now. Yes, I'm 88, and there are things I can't do: I can't run a race or climb Everest. But isn't life magnificent?

I'm not surprised 'The Avengers' has such enduring popularity, because it was a groundbreaking series that changed television. It was the first show that put its leading man and leading lady on an equal footing and showed a woman fighting and kicking and throwing men around. That was a radical departure in its time.

Linda Thorson was a great actress with a great body, but she arrived just as 'The Avengers' was losing its appeal.

Retirement's the most wonderful thing. I get to enjoy all the things I never stopped to notice on the way up. After an extraordinary life, it's time to enjoy my retirement.

The very first thing you learn if you're a gentleman is that you never compare one woman to another. That's the way of all death.

Television has some lovely aspects to it and some ghastly aspects but the theater itself was a wonderful invention.

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

Nowadays I'm not even sure if newspapers take into account whether a person is a good writer.

In the little hall leading to it was a rack holding various Socialist or radical newspapers, tracts, and pamphlets in very small print and on very bad paper. The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories.

It's strange that the newspapers don't see a connection between their false revelations about my private life and my need for seclusion and security.

I couldn't have attended half the parties that I was supposed to have been to according to the newspapers. It bothers me.

What kind of morons do you have working at newspapers in Austin that would base an entire review of an artist's performance on whether or not they had a good seat?

In these times we fight for ideas and newspapers are our fortress.

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

The nicest thing is to open the newspapers and not to find yourself in them.

Radio, newspapers, they were normal parts of my life. In those days, you had to go somewhere to watch television and leave something to see it.

It was 1966 by the time I started taking pictures seriously and books, newspapers and magazines of the time were full of great pictures that helped to inspire me.

Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.

No one knows who is listening, say nothing you would not wish put in the newspapers.

I suppose I will go on selling newspapers until at last will come the late night final.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

My name was on the list very early after these announcements were made through the newspapers in Europe.

The votes of 60,000 Floridians were not counted. The Court threw out all 60,00 votes. And that's what the newspapers around the country are counting now.

Don't believe everything that you read in the newspapers.

My reputation was a bit exaggerated. Things were written in newspapers, then copied, then doubled. One of the reasons why I never disclaimed that, was because I found it amusing. But I also constructed such an image for myself in order to gain more of a private life.

And in the Second World War, you didn't just read about it in the newspapers because you weren't allowed to read it in the newspapers. It was all censored, you know? So nobody knew what we were doing.

I tried to keep it secret, but the story got into the newspapers. It was more difficult for my family, who couldn't understand why the media wouldn't leave me in peace.