Alexander McCall Smith, author, The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

He is one of the few directors I could name. I thought that The Talented Mr Ripley was a brilliant, wonderful film, and I also enjoyed Cold Mountain. So I knew his work, and the lovely textures, colours and feel of his work. He brought all that to The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and I'm so proud that it was Minghella who made the film of my book. It's a terrible loss for British, and indeed world, cinema.

When I read his screenplay I was very, very pleased with the job that he did of it. He knew my books intimately, he understood what they were about, and he added to the story with developments of his own, which I was delighted with. I wish I had thought of them!

I went out to Botswana and spent a few days on the set. I was vastly impressed with the speed with which he came to understand the culture of Botswana, and the way he approached the whole project. He was pretty busy and I didn't want to get in the way but he was such a kind, courteous man. For example, he let me call “Action!”, and let me stand with him while he was making the shot.

This is his last film and I think he put an awful lot of feeling into it. He made such a beautiful tribute to a country and its people. I think no author could ever have hoped for a more sympathetic director. From the author's point of view he was the director from heaven.

Ken Russell, film director

I grew up on Minghella's dad's ice-cream in Ryde, Isle of Wight, a scoop each of chocolate and strawberry. A writer himself, he was great at adapting bestsellers. Minghella was keen to the poetry in a story. He wove spells by referencing Herodotus, Neruda, cello-playing, extravagant winds that one fought with knives and swords - as hopeless as fighting passion with social rules. “The palace of winds,” the hollow at the base of a woman's neck (The English Patient); the moments like “a bag of diamonds in a black heart” (Cold Mountain) - all of these evoked mystery, desperate longing and romance, of which he was the undisputed master.

He was the best at showing exotic locations, romantic times, glamorous lovers separated and frustrated by unavailability, guilt, war, long distance or death. He let us into a world of deep shadows and powerful passions overcoming refinement and education, an artist's world where the dialogue and location were turn-ons: Rome, Greece, Venice, the Sahara.

He was the king of poetic lust. He liked to raise the hair on the back of one's neck. His images are memorable: the church paintings seen by torchlight, the cave paintings, the plane crash, the Jeep buried by a sandstorm, the landscape of the Sahara dunes, the body being the real country without boundaries. His films were romantic in a very English sense and that's why he appealed to the Hollywood studios - stiff upper lip, elegant sex. He's welcome (as in Truly, Madly, Deeply) to come and watch videos in my living room anytime.

Martin Freeman, actor, Breaking and Entering

He loved actors and working with them and as a result actors loved working with him because they felt this empathy from this man who not only wrote some very great words but could help you with how to say them. He had such faith in me that it gave me so much confidence. I was expecting this brain on legs but in fact he was this lovely man who was very open, gave his time very generously and was not at all jaded. When I did Breaking and Entering he made the set happy, he made it playful and never let his intellect get in the way of his heart. []He also had this way of taking the work seriously but not himself. He wasn't above being and idiot on set - he would break into song at least once a day.

Liz Jensen, author of The Ninth Life of Louis Drax, which Minghella was adapting and was set to direct

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