up, but that's what this bring this up, but that's what this is about. very quickly, a big day tomorrow for all these fitness gurus and charities, everyone is running for charities, the sunday times saying there's huge security for the london marathon. we were saying earlier, i don't know if this is right, but should it be publicised in this way? i think you have to. after the terrible events in paris this week, and you have to reassure people saying there will be people all along the run, and it is a long run, checking there is no terrible accident. you have the royalfamily and the duke and duchess of cambridge and prince william turning up, this is for their charity. this marathon is for their charity rather. and i also believe that it makes you sound as if you're in control. of course none of us are in

control. of course none of us are in control because these terrible things keep happening. control because these terrible things keep happeningm control because these terrible things keep happening. it is a tribute to the british stiff upper lip. tribute to the british stiff upper lip, we are going to do this and not be rattled by it. if anyone is wondering about the connection with the royals, if you want to follow it on twitter it is mind of a marathon. bad language on the back of the mail on sunday. not their bad language but... —— mind ofa marathon. on sunday. not their bad language but... -- mind of a marathon. we come from the day when this guy first came on the scene, they called him nasty from the get go. i'm really ha p py him nasty from the get go. i'm really happy that women are not putting up with this dude, it is really good. he's in his 70s, he's had a wonderful life, a wonderful career. from about 1978, 1979 and women aren't putting up with it any more. women weren't paid enough...

and now they are big stuff. they aren't putting up with this and now this old guy has got the message, good, go off with your nasty self! the also upset serena williams, i doubt she is bothered. she is laughing, she could beat him eight months pregnant! sounds exhausting! eve pollard, bonnie greer, it's been wonderful! thank you very much. i didn't do much there! anyway, that is it for the papers. thank you to both my guests. coming up next it is meet the author. dickensian london in the year of the great exhibition, and the churning metropolis of our own time. brought together by two characters whose stories are intertwined and this and who reach for each other across the years that separates them. michele roberts' new novel,

the walworth beauty, is a hymn to london. its changing ways and it enduring character. and also a book about how we live now, that celebrate timeless longings and desires. welcome. there is a ghostly element to this story. do you like ghost stories? i do love them, and that's partly because i have felt haunted myself a couple of times, and they have had to work out what was going on, and i worked out that to explain a ghost, and the fear itit induced in me, i had to tell a little story to myself to make sense of it. one of the things about the ghostly element in this book is that it is very delicate and gentle.

it's not somebody clanking along with his head under his arm or chains, it'sjust a breath on the neck, that kind of thing. was that your experience? yes, it was on the back of my neck, is if someone was pressing cold cobwebs against it. gosh. and then a mirro fell off the wall in the middle of the night and crashed. and i just felt full of terror, the atmosphere was charged with terror. the ghost in my novel, i think, is a bit of a kinder ghost, it's not so scary. well, i didn't know any of this when we started, but that's really a very interesting story, because the book is wonderfully atmospheric, 1851 dickensian london. and the london that anybody who lives there now in 2011, 2012. you see them, really, part of a continuous story, don't you? i do, and i think anyone who loves large cities with ancient buildings and streets in them, and he walks in, as i do, has a sense, always of history being just below the pavement. it's as though the city is layers and layers of mystery. sometimes, it's popping up, a pavement tilts up,

something happens, he passed by an old graveyards, you see an old industrial building. now, the story's told, essentially, by two characters, joseph and madeleine. whose stories are more than a century apart, and they are told in separate chapters which are interwoven in the book. and it's quite clear that you see something, despite all the differences between them, that connects them. what is it? i think they are both very concerned with the lives and fates of young women. joseph is charging around south london doing research on to the lodgings of prostitutes, of young girls working with prostitutes. and madeleine, a century later, is very concerned with two young female friends of hers, how they survive in the big city, and learning that, obviously, not all young women these days, despite their poverty, feels the need to sell themselves as prostitutes. sojosef and madeline are having the kind of conversation that they are in a sense, haunting each other as much is being haunted. madeleine finds in her back garden, shards of bone, old buttons, cloth buttons, little bits of china,

and she can't bear to throw them away. she's been digging the plot. so she brings them indoors, and that's when the hauntings start. by the end of the novel, we understand what those little tiny broken pieces refer to. and do you have a constant sense of the past? notjust in what happens if you dig up the street, but in the characters who walks those streets, what they thought and felt? and what, in a sense, has been passed on to us? yes, one of my characters is the grandmother of madeleine. she's dead, long since, nellie. but she talks to madeleine, sort of, over her shoulder all the time. and she is a real bridge with the past, because that's how i remember my own london grandmother. her quips and saying, her amazing cockney accent. her bawdiness, her funny stories. i mentioned that the chapters are intermittent, one called joseph and one called madeleine.

and the story unfolds way. technically, that's quite a tricky thing to carry off. did you find it difficult and did you simply write a joseph chapter, then a madeleine chapter? or did you do a lot ofjoseph chapters then stick madeleine in? i started with madeleine. and it was clear, quite quickly, that it wasn't going to work with just her as the narrator. and i was thinking, oh dear, is there really a novel here? and then wentjoseph erupted and just opened a door, went up a staircase and darkness, opened another door, i thought, yes, the story starts now. well, of course, if we didn't know that you were london this, anyone reading the book would understand that you are, because it's just pulses with a love of the city and its history, its ways and voices. yes, and i've always lived in london. i grew up in the suburbs in london and moved to london as fast as i could. and i walk around it all the time, on my own, often at night. always trying to take a different

route, happily getting lost, going to a pub, someone will come and talk to you. london is very alive for me, full of ghosts but full of people in the present as well. in that sense, it is still, especially in parts of south london that you set the bar again, it still has a dickensian feel, that sort of churning, nonstop life. the characters who inhabit it. i suppose it's like any big city, but london seems to have that quality. i think partly it is because we've got the city of london. and it is always renewing itself, following up new buildings, old ones come tumbling down. and people are very energised, very driven, they hurtle about. even where i live in southeast london, on the main street, a sort of hurtling that goes on. this is the london that you love. the london i love is very much the modern city, but the city with all its echoes of dickensian times, through old industrial buildings. they are venetian, they are neo—byza ntine, they are neo—gothic, theyjust send me into rapture. i assume you love dickens? do you know, i have a lot of trouble with dickens. i find him a very

difficult writer to read. that's interesting, why? partly, it's the carnivalesque, elaborate baroque prose. partly, it's the length of the novel. to my shame. partly, it's his absolute incapacity to create interesting women characters who aren't just sugar dolls. well, there we are, we'll get some letters about that. but there is that wonderful capture of a life that is, i suppose, now people would talk about it as being magic realism. you know, spontaneous combustion, all the things that happen, there's a kind of life that takes us out of the here and now with wonderful beeps of the imagination. that, i suspect to you, must be exciting. it is, and i actually find that in dickens‘ essay, night walks, when he describes walking at night, roaming the city, coming across all kinds of strange characters, pausing to chat to them. that is the dickens i love. when did you start this business of wandering around london at night? when i was very young,

i came to london when i was 21, after university. and ijust began to wander the streets. and of course, for women, there is a sexual double standard. if you're always told, it's dangerous, you mustn't do it, a woman who wanders the streets is called a streetwalker which means a prostitute, a man who wanders the streets is called a psycho geographer, or a flaneur. but i always thought, i'm not going to let anyone take my freedom away. i have always walked around the streets. so you discovered a parallel universe of your own? i have, because as a reader, i've thought a lot about women writers who love the city like i do. so every time i'm in the city of london, i'll think of charlotte bronte coming to the coffee house before setting sail for brussels. or as i move up towards hampstead, i think of elizabeth gaskell, walking from harley street to hampstead, for an evening picnic. people like that. and many people will associate that with the walworth beauty, when they pick up your novel. michele roberts, thank you very much.

thank you very much, jim. there are clear skies for many of us tonight. temperatures have been dropping quite quickly and tomorrow, they should be some sunshine. it is london marathon on day tomorrow. a largely dry picture across much of the country with spring sunshine around. things turned wintry into the working week. high—pressure is holding on for another day. showers continuing across northern parts of scotla nd continuing across northern parts of scotland through the early hours of sunday. perhaps one or two showers across south—west england. at the time we get to dawn on sunday, temperatures below freezing for parts of wales, northern ireland and scotla nd parts of wales, northern ireland and scotland particularly in the sunshine —— countryside. in the afternoon, temperatures and 131a degrees for the marathon on. quite a

lot of cloud, not bad running conditions. best of the sunshine will be further north. this is 9am, across wales, north midlands, into much of northern england as well though a decent morning to come. acting northern ireland and western scotla nd acting northern ireland and western scotland will be fairly cloudy through the morning with one of two showers and plenty of showers continuing through the northern isles of scotland where it will be breezy. elsewhere, are largely dry picture with sunshine, particularly through the central part of england. through the south of that, cloudy conditions but it is most likely to stay dry in london, just a chance of a small passing shower. temperatures 10- 16 a small passing shower. temperatures 10— 16 degrees that it will turn cloudy and damp for the west of scotla nd cloudy and damp for the west of scotland through the day. this is true —— due to this system. as it moves through, it will bring cloud and patchy rain to northern ireland,

—— scotland. sleet and snow across parts of scotland. temperatures nine oi’ parts of scotland. temperatures nine or10 parts of scotland. temperatures nine or 10 degrees at best. any mild air gets cleared away towards the south as we head into tuesday. the doors are open for much colder air to spilling from the north. quite a wintry feel as we had through tuesday and into wednesday. some sleet and snow over high ground in the north. further south, a dry picture. temperatures will be well below average for this time of year. we are also likely to see a return of overnight frost. welcome to bbc news. our top stories: police are out in force for the french presidential election after the attack in paris on thursday. hundreds of thousands of people join

the first—ever "march for science" in cities around the world. afghanistan is to mark a day of mourning after a taliban attack killed and wounded over 100 afghan soldiers. also coming up. london belongs to the blues as chelsea beat spurs in the semi final of the fa cup.