Along with never having got round to writing down our constitution and having a monarch who legally owns all the swans, one of the things that makes the UK a bit of an outlier is our university admissions system.

Constance Spry was one of the first people to put flowers in urns and ceramic swans and other unusual containers, but her arrangements tended to be a little less full.

Sometimes I'll go by and there are a couple of swans, the next day it's a few ducks. I'd like to stop there every day for a year and capture how it changes, then put it all together to create an incredible image of a traditional English scene.

There's a little pond near my house, and I see two swans there all the time who are obviously in love. But they look like the same bird, so I don't know if they're male or female, but they're definitely in love.

I'm crazy about ducks and swans and geese, so I don't eat foie gras. I try to eat organic.

I think we have all got to keep active - if we don't we will just seize up and, you know, we won't be able to get out of bed in the morning. It doesn't matter what it is, 10 minutes or 20 minutes, it just starts off the day and I do a sort of combination: a bit of Silver Swans and a bit of pilates and a lot of walking, which I love.

Vinod Khosla is best known for shunning convention and taking massive risks on companies he calls 'black swans' -companies with a near-complete chance of failure. But, if they succeed, the world will be forever changed.

'Wild Swans' showed me there are Chinese traditions that still affect my life. For example, it's not that women are inferior, exactly, but my dad and my brother are the most important men in my life and I would do anything for them. I feel like I should be the one cooking and looking after them.

I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turn into confident ducks.

Women who start out as ugly ducklings don't become beautiful swans. What they mainly become is confident ducks. They take charge of their lives.

I always believed I was an ugly duckling in a family of swans, you know? I was such a black sheep, and it was the same way in high school... I was just kind of that awkward theater kid with a bunch of athletes... it was very 'Glee.'

I thought acting was all about natural instinct but I've realised, through working with so many talented actors on 'Wild Swans' and 'Run,' that I can see the training. That's why I am back at drama school.

While I was writing Wild Swans I thought the famine was the result of economic mismanagement but during the research I realised that it was something more sinister.

It is not that the French are not profound, but they all express themselves so well that we are led to take their geese for swans.