The BBC "wasn't taking Shakespeare seriously" But Sir Richard prefers to see the two Henry IVs as essentially domestic dramas. Yes, of course, they have that political dimension, but like many of Shakespeare's plays, they are about family dynamics, in this case father and son, Henry and Prince Hal, and also about Prince Hal and Falstaff as a surrogate father. Shakespeare raises the stakes by making the family a royal one. To fit the original texts into the BBC's two-hour time slots, Sir Richard has hade to cut both back by around a quarter. I saw it as a licence to remove the repetitions that work well in the theatre but not on TV. What I have tried to do with both plays is to make them as clear as possible in their own terms. I certainly don't have a problem with the idea of making them accessible. These adaptations are not dumbing down. I see them as dumbing up. Why, though, has he been so very keen for so long to get "proper" Shakespeare back on the BBC (as opposed to the corporation's more recent standby, filmed versions of stage plays broadcast on BBC Four)? "When I was 13," he remembers, as we talk in the west London home he shares with his wife, Sue Birtwistle, award-winning producer of the BBC's celebrated 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, "I saw a production on the BBC of As You Like It with Vanessa Redgrave. I was absolutely enraptured by it. It changed my life. Up to that point I had been more interested in science, had thought that I would be a chemical engineer, but seeing that production capsized me. Sir Richard's parents were not interested in the theatre. In his 1993 memoir, Utopia and Other Places, he describes them both as distant and unhappy, and reports his father's line that "Shakespeare is complete bollocks." There were no theatres near the family home in Dorset, and so without that BBC film, he says, his life might have taken a very different turn. "I feel quite evangelical about this," he begins, almost apologetically. I see a glimpse of him in action at a BBC governors" meeting. There is in our society a gulf opening up, a kind of cultural apartheid, between those who are brought up to feel our national culture is theirs, to take ownership of it, and enjoy the privileges of that, and those who are completely disfranchised, those - for example - who will never be taken to the theatre to see Shakespeare. One obvious place to close that divide, he argues, is at school, as he has told Michael Gove. And the Education Secretary's response? "He listened and made the right noises," replies Sir Richard diplomatically. And then? Well this all happened when the Conservatives were in opposition, and I had been talking about arts education again, and Jeremy Hunt contacted me and asked for a meeting. I went along and Michael Gove was there too. So since Gove and Hunt have taken office, has Sir Richard seen evidence of them taking seriously their endorsement of his desire to see culture given more emphasis on the core curriculum? "They've had a lot on their plates," he replies. I take that as a no. It is not just in schools that he would like so see more engagement with the cultural canon. I'm an obsessive grandparent and my two-year-old granddaughter is going along with her mother to music classes run by the London Symphony Orchestra for toddlers where they are given the chance to play an instrument, to participate. Every child should have that opportunity. I know there are financial constraints now, and I don't want to sound as if I am indulging in arts-speak, but it is a matter of belief for me that, in the end, what we are talking about when we ask for more arts education is more learning about empathy. That is what lies at the heart of all artistic endeavour, experiencing things through the mind of someone else. That is fundamental to a healthy society; for the state to neglect it is pernicious. The Hollow Crown: Henry IV Part 2, will be on BBC Two tonight, 8pm.