Peter Greenaway, writer/director
One summer, more than 40 years ago now, my family and I stayed in a house near Hay-on-Wye. I always had a pen in my hand, I was always drawing. Intrigued by how the look of a piece of architecture changed according to where the sun was, I decided to draw the house from different perspectives. I set up perhaps five vantage points in the garden offering different views of the building as the shadows moved and the light changed. And I thought here’s an idea for a film. At the same time I was fascinated by England’s grand country houses – we lived near the Fonthill Estate, and on previous holidays I had painted the splendid Holkham Hall in Norfolk. I started thinking about the genre of country house drama, such a crucial one for English cinema. And, being of a certain clerical disposition, I was thinking of number counts, alphabetical structures and colour coding.
