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“... not to repeat Mrs Thatcher’s famous gaffe) that time has come at the age of 68; in the case of Kenneth Branagh, at the age of 28. Make of that what you will. Actually I had never thought that Kenneth Branagh was a particularly interesting person until the press started to tell me that he was, whereas Robin Day ...”

“... by the fact that the heroic pilot’s role is handsomely filled by Tom Hardy, while the navy gets Kenneth Branagh, his eyes moist as he thinks of ‘home’, and ready to stay on after the evacuation to do what he can ‘for the French’. I imagine this line is meant to sound decent, even noble, but it comes across as patronising, suggesting that he is ...”

“... benefits of the Polar industry – the biopics, the biographies, the inexplicable determination of Kenneth Branagh (of Shackleton) to out-act John Mills (of Scott of the Antarctic), the retellings of modern legends about the explorers freezing and dying and writing poetry as they did so. But Tromsø is almost empty. There seem to be hardly any ...”

“... by Emma Thompson) takes from her marriage and the impact of her supposed death on Guy (Kenneth Branagh did these scenes with a thrilling rawness) both bring a shift in the balance not so much of power as of need between the partners. James Cellan Jones’s direction made the most of the battle scenes too. Manning herself hadn’t seen ...”

“... own career, puffing him as the nation’s number-one playwright – just like Lawrence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh would go on to do – as a means of representing himself as its number-one actor. He had himself painted and engraved alongside Shakespeare’s bust. And he commissioned Roubiliac to do a sculpture of Shakespeare in the guise of a prosperous ...”

“... Kenneth Branagh​ ’s Belfast is set in the early months of the Troubles, in a mixed working-class district that is cleared of its Catholic residents by a loyalist mob. Paving stones are lifted to barricade the end of the street. Neighbourhood vigilantes are replaced by paramilitaries and the British army. Though the representation of events is spare and often stylised, the film catches the impact of the crisis not just on smashed and burned terraced houses but on the fabric of everyday decency ...”

“... The great detective​ never rests, and perhaps doesn’t want to, although in Kenneth Branagh’s new film he does express a wish for a day or two off. No such luck, of course, something has to happen even in a slow and glossy movie. He starts off by dealing with a theft in Jerusalem, runs into the titular murder on the Orient Express, and at the end is summoned to a sequel, I mean to Egypt for a job that sounds as if it might involve a death on the Nile ...”

“... chewing the scenery while also phoning it in. Witness the completely pointless recent remake with Kenneth Branagh as Poirot. John Malkovich is about to impersonate the great detective in a Christmas adaptation of The ABC Murders – now that one I’m looking forward to.) A novel in which the detective did it. A novel in which the entire structure of the ...”

“... Sometimes that, too, can lead to retrospective wishful thinking. When I was in Germany last month, Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V was showing everywhere, and had clearly caused something of a stir. More than one German asked me whether it should not be seen as part of a long-standing English vision of European unity. I had to confess that I had never before ...”