push to close gender first time. push to close gender gap sta rts first time. push to close gender gap starts at the top. this is how companies can address the gender pay 93p- companies can address the gender pay gap. this month new legislation comes in that big companies will have to publish data that will tell us have to publish data that will tell us just how have to publish data that will tell usjust how big have to publish data that will tell us just how big the gender payback is going to be —— pay gap. us just how big the gender payback is going to be -- pay gap. there is further analysis in the newspaper but it is an interesting story. there is still obviously a gender pay gap and a friend of mine works in headhunting and working out what is going on with winning and why there aren't more women at the top of companies and why the pay gap is so of companies and why the pay gap is so big. it is partially because companies are not very good, certain of them, not all of them, adjusting their working practices so people can work effectively and maybe they are not constantly five days a week in the office. this is looking at if people at the top just what they are doing to make the company is more available for women, which is interesting, like for example having a supermarket. because women do all

of the shopping! that is exactly it. it isa of the shopping! that is exactly it. it is a fascinating point. quite right. that's great, how wonderful to have a supermarket but what about the idea that only women go to supermarkets to do the shopping. that betrays a lot. looking at the message from the top, if that is the message from the top, if that is the message from the top, if that is the message from the top, that will not encourage people. clearly in everything the ethics of the company, coming to attitudes, and all kinds of things, the chief executive sets the tone. but this cotties executive sets the tone. but this comes in the context of the uk facing a productivity crisis and we need the contribution of all kinds of people to help come up with smart ideas. including women shopping in the supermarket! a novel idea! that's the papers for this hour. don't forget all the front pages are online on the bbc news website where you can read a detailed review. it's all there for you — seven days a week at bbc.co.uk/papers — and you can see us there too — with each night's edition of the papers being posted on the page shortly after we've finished.

don't go anywhere. lucy and tom — we'll see you again at 11:30pm. now it's time for meet the author. we all know what it feels like to get lost in a book. in scarlett thomas's novel dragon's green she turns it into a story of magic and danger. a children's quest that's also a struggle to make sense of a place that's been turned upside down by a catastrophic event called worldquake. as a writer who has had great success with what's usually called literary fiction, she has found it an experience that has changed her as much as any of her characters. welcome. so, what did you discover about writing and about your own writing when you brought magic into the equation?

a lot, is the answer to that. earlier in my career i started writing about maths and then i moved on to physics and then botany and now magic! like so many classics of children's fiction you're stepping into another world, whether through a wardrobe or down a rabbit hole and in this case really by going back to the idea of a book as the doorway to some different world, it is obviously something that energises you. and for me, this is part of the whole concept of magic. i think books are magic. i think lots of things are magic but books are definitely magic, and when you open the pages and there are black marks on a white sheet and they can transport you, they can change you, they can really do almost anything, they can make you cry, make you laugh, it is astonishing. you wrote somewhere in the course

of describing your irritation with the categorisation of books and saying we shouldn't think of literary fiction and children's fiction as being separate things, you also said every children's story, every children's novel, i think you said, is a political text. can you explain that? how long have you got? when you write children's fiction you have to make lots of decisions and especially in a non—realist setting and if you are world building from scratch, so i had to decide, for example, in the other world where the characters go to there are these lovely big houses and grounds and everything is a bit pg wodehouse, but how do you maintain that without servants, how do you maintain that without having a kind of feudal situation which i don't believe is the right situation for people to live. so immediately i have

to confront these problems. somebody brings little effie her breakfast on a tray in the morning because i thought that would be nice for her. but who does that and why does she do that? is she a servant? the answer is that she isn't. but we discover later more about how that world works. so if you're creating a new world you have to invent rules and therefore you are saying something about how people live, or should live or shouldn't live. when i studied politics years and years ago one of the first things i learned was that politics happens in any situation with limited resources and you have to decide how to divide things up. it also happens in any fictional situation in which the author has made up fundamental things. how difficult do you find it to think about the right rules for your world? it required the same leaps of imagination that you get from plotting anything. it is plotting a world rather than just a story within a world, so at times it was easy and other times it took me months to come up with solutions, and some of them i am still working on!

because i haven't got to those bits yet. one of the things i am fascinated by is in the early sections particularly you are talking about life at school in many passages, and the sort of rules and the way that school works, and you clearly have an affection for the kind of discipline, almost, that will get people into learning. there is a very distinct kind of schoolroom that you describe. can you tell us how that came about because i am intrigued by it? i think it is partly a kind of nostalgia. not a political nostalgia but an aesthetic nostalgia for, not so much for what my school was like but what books were like when i was at school. we are going back quite far now. and i mean, the mean teacher who actually has your best interests at heart, that is an archetype that we find in a lot of other areas. it is a reassuring

archetype to you, isn't it? i think so because i suppose i believe no one is really that mean. even the baddies in the books are all from the world of publishing, by the way. funny, that. they are all a bit too clever for their own good. they do have bad aims in mind. other than that i try to be compassionate towards my character, compassionate towards my characters, so the mean old teacher wants the children to do well, and she is hilarious. effie, who really is the heroine of the book, what is your feeling about her? is there a lot of you in her? there is. and the idea of the girl hero, the girl who sets off on a quest and difficult things happen to her and she has to keep going, that was important to me

when i was writing the book, i had been ill and it was a struggle to get better, and ifound reading about other female heroes really inspiring. you have been quite open about the fact that you had for want of a better word we will call it a nervous breakdown, and this is a book that followed that, so it is inevitable that you must feel very strongly about some of the ideas about individualism and other things that come out in this book, that it is notjust a chance collision of atoms, it is something that sprang from your own experience? yeah, absolutely. there were some scenes that i wrote that as i wrote them they kind of made me better, so when they go through the forest and she confronts her demons, something in me sort of settled. a straightforward metaphorical thing. yeah. and i find especially with children's fiction and magical fiction that you are operating in that more archetypal sort of realm where you are dealing

with these deep things, and i am completely better nowjust in case anybody is wondering. in some ways you wanted to deal with them and it strikes me that you have found this form that came to you quite naturally, although there is a lot of hard work in it and problems to be solved, but the idea of doing it, once you picked it up you never wanted to let it go, it allowed you that freedom. absolutely, and something about the voice that i was able to access for this book. different from the voices in any of your other novels. sort of, or more a kind of development of. i do think each book is a development of the one that came before and this definitely develops the voice from the seed collectors, which is a kind of omniscient, free, direct style. you can go into anybody‘s head. when you go into people's heads, what you find is they are complicated and flawed and... isn't it always useful to have some

characters who are always seen from the outside? yes. you don't know what's going on inside their heads. yes, you can have that rule and when you're writing, any rules and restrictions are good because they make you work hard imaginatively to solve problems. but on the other hand, i think i do go everywhere with this book and it is quite fun. you're suddenly with a villain or a minor character or you zoom out to this strange narrator who isn't quite god but is next to god. and what you're saying finally is this is fun. yeah, it's amazing. i think it's because for me, i have found a voice that i didn't let myself use for a long time, or ijust didn't try it out and now i have found it it's amazing. i don't think it is necessarily an easy thing to do, but for me it was kind of coming home to my true voice. scarlett thomas, author of dragon's green and many more to come, thank you.

thank you. good evening. sitting in my garden earlier today i could definitely smell eau de barbecue. the cloud is thick enough for rain into the north—west but the temperatures, 25 degrees, 77 in the sun, disappointing in the north—west and behind the weather front, cold front, noticeably cooler, top temperatures of seven or 8 degrees. that front pushing southwards steadily, not producing much in the way of rain but a band of cloud through the night, but it will introduce a different feel to the weather, a fresh appeal, one or two

showers in the far north falling as sleet and snow on the tops of the hills and mountains. the cooler and fresher scenario continues. sunny spells around but a noticeable difference with the feel of the weather, so by the middle of the afternoon despite sunshine the winds from the north—westerly direction will continue to feed in a few showers for much of scotland, highest values of eight or 10 degrees, similar in northern ireland, although showers you or five between. a little bit of fair weather cloud but not a bad day in terms of sunny weather but look at the difference in the feel of things. 11—14 the highest in the south—east, so 8—10 down on yesterday. sunshine in the south—west and west coast of wales and with the clearest skies by date through the night it means temperatures fall away swiftly so in more rural spots we could see a touch of light frost first thing on tuesday morning, cloud and rain gathering in the far north and west, againa bit

gathering in the far north and west, again a bit more degrees. the wind direction changing from a north—westerly to westerly, only su btle north—westerly to westerly, only subtle changes, but that might mean temperatures will be a degree or so up temperatures will be a degree or so up on tuesday, particularly in the south—east with highs of 16 degrees. more weather front is toppling further south but a two—week affair, no significant rain in the story this week that it means on wednesday with weather fronts we could see a fairamount of with weather fronts we could see a fair amount of cloud around, a good deal of dry weather, similar story moving into thursday. as for the easter weekend the coolmore billy winn stays with us, a good deal of dry weather in the story, just a few showers but the nights will be pretty chilly. —— cooler and more chilly winds. this is bbc news. i'm martine croxall. the headlines at 11: a british man, chris bevington, is named as one of the four people who died in the stockholm lorry attack. huge crowds have taken part

in a vigil for the victims near the attack site in the swedish capital. egypt has declared a three—month state of emergency following two bomb attacks on coptic churches which killed dozens of people. a huge data breach at the payday lender wonga. nearly a quarter of a million customers may be affected. also in the next hour: the grand national winner. one for arthur returns to his stables in kinross. the eight year old was welcomed back by fans after winning, the first scottish success in the race since 1979. and we will review the morning papers, including