owe i’ over a aired a —— air disasterfears over a poor standard of english among foreign pilots, meaning perhaps communication in the skies when things get tricky is not as clear as it might be. it is worrying that this is more than once before we have had pilots... i understood they double—check and speak carefully in a particular language to ensure if they do not understand they asked them to repeat it but one assumes if you are a pilot, you have the same standard in terms of communication, no matter what country you are from. you would have thought. this implies not. there is a case where a pilot has gone on the wrong way without being clearance which the air traffic controller thought the pilot did not necessarily understand instructions. the main concern is pilots based overseas are in some way getting around, all being guided through the language tests. they can

fly the plane, the issue is whether they understand what local controllers a re they understand what local controllers are telling them. shall we finish with the express. they love a health story. we are being told to walk. obviously not enough doing it. a daily walk, experts tell 20 million lazy britons to get more exercise. that always goes down well, to be called a couch potato! the point is simple. the british heart foundation are concerned patients they see do not do any exercise. this front page could have been run at any point and probably has been over the last 50 years. it says if you keep walking you will get fit. if you keep eating healthy food you maybe will have a healthier life. the moment this breakthrough is the moment the express will go out of business. maybe we need is the express to remind us. it says in

some regions, the figure is as high as 97% of people being physically inactive. there are lots of ways we are told we can change that. it is difficult to acquire new habits and easy to acquire bad ones. take the stairs, get off the bus they stop earlier. but the real thing is the cost of 1.2 billion to the nhs and increasingly we are told we have to ta ke increasingly we are told we have to take care of our own health because some of the things we do cost the nhs so much more. this idea we should do more exercise. 20 minutes, of daily walking, which i'm sure we all do already? we are doing our bit. i certainly do. that is because i have a dog and she insists upon it. that's it for the papers tonight. we will be back at 11:30pm. you can

also see all the front pages online on the bbc news website. we will be backin on the bbc news website. we will be back in 42 minutes withjim and jacqui. now it's time for meet the author. three sisters, three queens is a novel of the women who became queens of england, scotland and france and who were condemned to rivalry, family conflict and a bloody struggle for succession. a novelist doesn't have to invent that story, it was the real story of the early 16th century after catherine of aragon arrived as a tudor bride. philippa gregory has spun the story of that period into a string of bestselling novels and this is her latest subject — three sisters, three queens. welcome. even by 16th century standards

it is a great story. how well do you think this bit of the whole saga is understood and remembered? in a way, it's a really classic example of fiction and history put together, that this story of three sisters, three queens is a construct. what we're actually talking about is the history of catherine of aragon in the relatively early years of her marriage with henry viii and the quite separate histories of his two sisters. but, then, as a novelist, i come to these histories and go, like, but they actually are sisters, they know of each other and as it happens, the rise and fall

of their success in their lives, in their kingdoms and in their fertility, compares and contrasts almost exactly. so it's a very nice example for me of what you can do in fiction that you wouldn't necessarily do in history. but of course the history itself, which hangs over the whole story, your fictional account of it, is so extraordinary. the fate of nations hanging on a marriage, on a rivalry, on an unexpected death, whatever it happens to be. it seems to me, i hope this isn't pushing it too far, but it's strangely contemporary, about how the fate of nations can change in the wink of an eye, whether it's a royal marriage or a referendum. i think one of the reasons why i love the tudor period so much is you get these enormous consequences from the decisions of one person. so if you look at the one person, you really get a way into the history, which is completely fascinating.

and so you do get this big national story focused on, in this instance, the choice of james of scotland to marry margaret, henry viii‘s sister, which puts the two countries into total unity and in the end produces the child who will unify the two countries. take us through the three of them. the rivalries that sort of entangled them in the course of a few years had huge consequences. we know the wives very well and there's been very much less work done on the sisters and almost no work done on the mistresses and i really think what you see there is an example of the historical selection, which goes, like, we don't want that many women in the record, thank you. we've got six wives, let's leave the sisters out of it. which means you actually really rarely, for the tudor period, you have these untold stories.

so the story we do know is catherine of aragon and she arrives in the novel as she arrives pretty well at the english court, as a princess from spain. and immediately attracts, in my version of events, the jealousy and the sort of affronted envy of margaret, who until then was the top princess at henry's court. the other girl in the mix is mary, henry's other sister, younger sister. famously beautiful, famously wilful, who is married off to the very, very old king of france and recovers from that really disastrous marriage for her, political marriage, to marry the man of her choice. so you've got these three very different stories about princesses who are all married to make the alliances for their family and how they survive that experience. it's the question that you have come

to know very well over the years. how much liberty do you feel free to take with the history for which you have so much affection and so much respect? i don't take liberty with the history. i know authors who do and i think they're right to take whatever choice they want, but i don't. but you are dealing with characters at a depth that we can't know. where i believe that i am right to go into fiction, where i love the process of going into fiction, is saying, if she did that, she must have been feeling this or she must be wanting to do this, or this is an expression of this sort of character. so the fiction comes out of the history, but first of all i look at what's happened and then i say, if somebody behaves like that, then they must be a woman of this nature. you've lived with this gang for such a long time now. i've been married to henry viii longer than any wife! of these three women,

the three sisters and queens, as you describe them in the title, which one draws you in the most? you say catherine of aragon, because of the marriage to henry, is the one that we know, whether accurately or not. which of them attracts you most? it's very... in a sense, which you like best is not the same as who is the most interesting, so you've got two things going on there. i have great affection for catherine of aragon. i think she was an extraordinary and courageous woman. margaret, henry's sister, lived an amazing life. i mean, she's married as a very young woman to james of scotland and then, when widowed, she chooses her husband and she has to run away from scotland. she gets to england and divorces him, she marries a third husband for choice. she's behaving as if she were in total charge of her own destiny. but of course the loss of her first husband is the fault

of the english court. yes, it's planned as a campaign by catherine of aragon, so you have this terrible dark side of the sisterhood, that they are always rivals and it is catherine of aragon‘s campaign that kills her brother—in—law. you can't read about these events, whether in straight history or fiction, without a sort of mind—boggling feeling of everything that subsequently came is determined by some of these almost chance events. i think the idea of history as the past, as another country, i think when you're an historian you get this real double view of it. on the one hand you go, yes, it's almost completely separate from our world and completely different, yet you can see how the actions then produce the consequences of today. i mean, the whole concept of nationhood, the way

the reformation separates us from europe, the way england and scotland are absolutely committed enemies for centuries before the unification, you know, these are in a sense really current ideas, which were being worked out then and to which they came to some conclusions. and the union of the crowns itself in 1603, about a century before the union of the parliament, came about really by accident because of what had happened in the period that you're talking about. absolutely. it's margaret's granddaughter‘s boy. and she of course thinks all the time that when she is queen of scotland and when catherine of aragon is failing to have an heir, she knows that her boy will be king of scotland and king of england, and it's only henry's decision to marry on until he gets a male heir that means margaret is not in fact the mother of the next king of england. which explains why the fascination continues.

philippa gregory, author of three sisters, three queens, thank you very much. thank you. good evening, it has been a sunday to put a smile on ourfaces good evening, it has been a sunday to put a smile on our faces with sunshine. nuisance cloud in the north—east and the odd shower and clu b north—east and the odd shower and club up into the south—west by the end the day but clear skies overnight will allow temperatures to fall away. maybe a touch of mist and fog and maybe in sheltered areas low enough for a touch of light frost. the cloud and wind gathers in the north—west, an indication of what is to come on monday. decent spells of sunshine for most. showers in

northern ireland, scotland, western coasts of wales and the south—west of england, but in the sunshine, 18 degrees is pleasant enough. the fronts will clear and showery rain easing in the south—east. sunny spells but fresher conditions follow—on. this is bbc news. the headlines at 11:00. theresa may assures gibraltar that britain remains committed to its people and its economy, post—brexit. the rock's chief minister says ‘trade' is the key issue. when we get the deal in brexit it

must be a deal. and if there is such a deal it is only fair, proper and right that it should apply to gibraltar. rescuers scramble to reach survivors in the colombia mudslides. at least 250 people have been killed. a state of emergency is declared. three more arrests on suspicion of attempted murder, over an alleged hate crime attack on a teenage asylum seeker in south london. five others are still being questioned. tributes to the writer, broadcaster and civil liberties campaigner, darcus howe, who's died at the age of 7a. and we'll look at the morning's newspapers in half an hour,