Ridley Scott: 'People say Napoleon was a monster. But he probably wasn't.'

‘Have you been drinking?’

Sir Ridley Scott steps into the meeting room and surveys the array of half-empty wine bottles with a twinkling grin.

I have indeed been drinking — and in most circumstances, getting stuck in to several glasses of high-quality plonk would probably not be the best preparation for interviewing one of the greatest (and most famously no-nonsense) filmmakers of all time. But these are not ordinary circumstances. Drinking is, in part, why I am here. You see, as well as releasing Napoleon this week, Sir Ridley Scott — 86 this month — is out to conquer the wine trade, too.

We meet on a bright, crispy-cold November afternoon at his ludicrously picturesque estate in the Luberon region of southern France. It’s here, on the clay-rich Provençal soil, that the