My room is on the front at the top of a tall, west-facing Edwardian house in Brook Green. I can see Hammersmith, Chiswick, the arch of Wembley Stadium and, on a good day, some distant low hills. There are many distractions - street life, the back gardens, the rear windows, the sunsets - so perhaps it's just as well that I'm only an occasional writer. It's quiet but for the babble of chatter in the morning and mid-afternoon from the mothers and children at the French school at the end of the street.

I requisitioned this room when my daughter, Lucy, left home about 10 years ago. The desk was designed so that I had everything at hand - reference books, letters, stationery and current projects - but now everything's on my MacBook I could as well be sitting in an empty room.

The chair has no special associations other than being borrowed from my wife, who works on the floor below. There are many photographs of her and Lucy (and of Ethiopia, where Lucy's been for the past three years). The one of Judi Dench is from a BBC TV production I did in 1980 of The Cherry Orchard. There's no visible theatre memorabilia apart from a watercolour of The Good Soldier Svejk, which Raymond Briggs did for my production at the National Theatre. To the right of Svejk is a slate from the roof of Broadcasting House before it was demolished, given to me by the board of the BBC when I left after nine years as a governor. The inscription is a quote from something I once wrote: "Working for the BBC was described to me as like working for a cross between the church and the Post Office; it seldom lived down to expectations."

There is a small Ganesh - the God of Removing Obstacles - given to me by a friend on my 60th birthday. Next to the laptop is a leather-bound calendar. The day, the date and the month can be changed by turning little milled wheels. It belonged to my grandfather, who went with Scott on his first expedition to the Antarctic.