in the long-term, was unfair and bad in the long—term, was unfair and bad in the long—term, was mr macron. he said he thought mr macron was squeezed out of taking pa rt macron was squeezed out of taking part in negotiations in the process because the germans saw that he disagreed with them on policy. one way in which again he is bad for brexit is, what france really wants to do is make sure that britain doesn't do a race to the bottom in terms of regulation and tax after brexit. so i think fans will really emphasise that strongly. france is keen to attract the city and get a brain drain going from london to paris because it's been going the other way to such a long time. so in that sense is bad for brexit, probably. he says, britain, you want to be in control of your borders, we wa nt to to be in control of your borders, we want to do it for you in calais, haveit want to do it for you in calais, have it back in dover. that's why i'm surprised the french election hasn't made the front of the daily mail! there you are, said it. hello daily mail. maybe they will their minds. i'm sure that there will be

discussions quite quickly about that. let's see. it's one thing when you are campaigning, it's another when you have the office of president, and what they do decide on that, because that would change things a great deal for people coming into the uk. but then a great deal will change in the coming two yea rs deal will change in the coming two years for the united kingdom and for europeans coming possibly, depending on what the powers that be decide in the brexit steel and the status of eu citizens and that equally of brits in the eu. and he needs some mps behind him. he has, elections will happen next month. at present en marche, his party, doesn't have a single member. so he's got to get some. presumably he'll be able to translate some of his momentum into a large numberof translate some of his momentum into a large number of seats. but if we can assume that the first round of elections indeed reflected the divisions accurately within france, there's no reason to presume that

jean—luc melenchon's people want to do well or force were ffion's people, or indeed the front national. so he may end up the parliament that is quite difficult deal with. that's it the papers of the moment, i'll be back with tim and benedicte at 11:30pm for another look at the front pages. coming up next, meet author. the thriller writer david baldacci has enjoyed the kind of success most authors can only dream about. his first book, absolute power, became a bestseller and it was turned into a film, starring and directed by clint eastwood. david baldacci has gone on to write 30 novels, which have sold more than 100 million copies around the world. his latest is called the fix and it's his third book about the detective amos decker, who witnesses a seemingly senseless and random murder outside the headquarters of the fbi,

in washington, dc. david baldacci, i'd like to start, if i may, by rewinding the clock back to your childhood, when your mother gave you a notebook in which to write stories. had you always wanted to be a writer? well, i was a big reader back then. i was probably about seven or eight years old. when i was a kid, i never shut up. i was telling tall tales all the time, usually to get myself out of trouble with school officials and other parents. and my mom came and brought me a journal. and she said, honey, you know, some of the stuff you've been talking about, why don't you try writing it down? so my pen hit the paper and i was kind of like, this epiphanyjust went off in my head. i can take my imagination, put it down on paper, and people can read what i'm thinking about.

this is so cool. and years went by and i went back to my mom and i said, thank you for such a gift, mom, for this, it changed my life. and she said, well, i'm so glad it worked out for you but, quite frankly, i just wanted to shut you up! you know, because moms need a little peace and quiet. i will always love you, but you just never stop talking. so, there you go, it worked out in the end. it worked out in the end, but in the interim, you became a lawyer. you didn't become a writer. so how did that happen? well, for, like, 15 years, i wrote short stories only, and you can't make a living selling short stories. maybe you could if you were john updike orjohn irving, but not david baldacci, so i never even got paid for when i sold a story. they would give me a bunch of free copies of the magazine and said that would be enough in payment. so i became a lawyer and i did very well. i practised for ten years from washington, writing the whole time. high school, college, law school, ten years of practising law. i wrote short stories, novellas, screenplays and then finally novels. and absolute powerjust really was the turning point for me. and then you were able to commit to it full—time. fast—forward now dozens of novels later to your latest novel, the fix, and this tells the story

of a man who shoots a woman outside the fbi headquarters and then turns the gun on himself. so it's a whydunnit, rather than a whodunnit. what inspired the story? well, this is the third instalment of my amos decker series. he's your detective. he is. we first saw him in ‘memory man'. and he has a perfect memory, hyperthymesia, because of a brain trauma that he suffered. and he is the most unlikeliest of heroes. he is not your knight in white shining armour. he is a big, sloppy, obese guy who has no personal skills, ticks everybody off, nobody really gets along with him. and i thought, yeah, that'd be a great series guy! people will love him. but they do. and his motivation is simple. he wants to find out the truth, no matter where it takes him. and so he looks at the scene. he was a witness to this crime. he was walking down the street and the guy pulls out a gun, shoots a woman, then turns the gun on himself. and he keeps going back to that scene. it's very hitchcockian. it's a small stage. he keeps going back, his mental frames flipping through. did he really see what he thought he saw? and so constantly, throughout

the entire novel, the reader — over his shoulder — going back and looking at that one scene. i wanted to make it really claustrophobic, you know. i wanted people to be hammered with that scene over and over again. because, look, as a lawyer, i know that eyewitness accounts are totally unreliable. people can't remember anything they saw. or even if they do remember it, it's all wrong. so i thought it would be kind of cool to put that as a plot point in a novel. as you say, amos decker isn't your typical hero. what appeals to you so much about him? so many of my other characters are kind of like, you know, they're fit and well trained and, you know, they're sort of classical heroes, ok? as an writer, i think if you don't expand and challenge yourself, you wither on the vine. so i wanted to write a character totally different from anything i've written before. amos decker fit that bill. i mean, he is not your typical hero. i channel him so easily, though. you know, he's really weird and quirky. and my wife will say, yeah, i can understand why you channel him so easily, cos you're that too!

what does that tell us about you? i was very struck by how topical the book is. the murder turns into an issue of national security. you also deal with isis, cyber hacking, cyber security. how important is that to you, to make the book feel current? i have to be... plausibility, i'm bound by plausibility. fortunately for me, it seems like these days, anything is possible. so i can write about anything and people will say, yeah, i think i read that in a newspaper last week. so for me, it's to take life as we know it now. and i'm very curious about the world. i try to read everything i can possibly read. so take life as it is now and try to extrapolate it out, so i can say, ok, what is it gonna be like in the nearfuture? and so i can sort of push the envelope and see what's coming down the road. i had an intelligence guy one time tell me... i'd written a scene and i thought it was gonna be over the top, too much. i said, read this, let me know if i need to pull it back. he said, i don't have to read it. i said, no, just read it and let me know if it's too much. he goes, i don't have to read it. i said, why not? he said, because if you can imagine it, we've already done it. really?

that's chilling. yes. and it's interesting you say you had a conversation with an intelligence guy, because i know you talk to members of the fbi and the secret service, don't you? yeah. what kind of things do they tell you? it's funny, they're wonderfully helpful, they share a lot of information. sometimes they'll say, i'm gonna tell you this, but can it never end up in a book? and it never does, cos i do play fair. so they've got a lot of stuff that, you know, i would not want to be them, because it must be hard to sleep at night sometimes. i was struck by how meticulously plotted the novel was, and i wondered, do you start from the outset knowing exactly what's going to happen, or does the story evolve as you're writing it? it really evolves organically. i've never known the ending of any book i've sat down to write. really?! so i write myself until the end. i've always thought that if i knew the ending, i wouldn't be creating a novel, i would be typing to the end, you know, a manuscript, not really writing. so for me, every day is an epiphany. i might sit down in front of the computer and think, er, what am i gonna do today? oh, my god, ok, let me just try this. and if it doesn't work, i can always go back, hit the delete

key and try something else. so that spontaneity is an integral part of creativity. so for me to plot along an outline that i've thought about before i've even created a character, i mean, how dulland boring would that be? and i think that boringness would come through in the pages. so for me to discover the page as i'm writing it, for the reader, i think it's gonna be stunning to them. but that must be even more difficult because you sometimes have more than one novel on the go, don't you? i mean, you have a phenomenal workload. you write two, sometimes three novels a year. how do you fit it all in? yeah, i'm obsessive about it. this is what i do and it's what i love to do. i think if i didn't love to write, i probably would have stopped by now. i've written a lot of books, and maybe i would just go do something else. but every day, i get up thinking to myself, it's so fortunate that i can tell another story today. i'm an eight—year—old kid, with a piece of paper and a pen, and i'm just using this in my head and putting it down for people to read. it's just a joy. and i tell an aspiring writer, i say, make sure you're in it for the right reasons. can you live without writing? if you can live without writing, go do something else,

because you're not gonna make it. because that will get you through all the bad times. that will get you through all the rejection and criticism people throw at you. it's like bullet—proof armour you're putting around yourself, that joy of writing, because no matter what they hit you with, you're gonna keep going. nonetheless, how difficult is it to keep coming up with different plots and ideas? i think the one attribute a writer needs to have is this non—stop curiosity about the world and life, and i certainly am. i read everything. i go to places, i talk to people all the time. i just absorb knowledge and information like you wouldn't believe, because i think if you know a lot about a lot of different things, you can bring those disparate elements together and, all of a sudden, you're writing some really unique stories. so it's a challenge to yourself. writing is not a job, it's not a hobby, it's not even a passion for me, it's a lifestyle. this is who i am and it permeates throughout my entire life. i'm never going anywhere... i'm sitting here right in the studio, but i'm also thinking about, you know, i'm looking around and seeing stuff and ideas are coming to me. it's just part of who i am. how do you relax? well, you know, i love to write. i relax by writing. i love to read.

i love to go out on the water. i'm a big boater, i like to do all the watersports and stuff. it'sjust nice, you know, i have a nice family and it's a nice life. but at the end of the day, it's that book and the pen that draws you back? my wife gave me a journal on christmas day. i tell people, never give a writer blank paper on a major holiday, cos you'll never see them for the rest of the day! david baldacci, it's been a pleasure to talk to you, thank you. thank you. good evening, a lovely spring day for us, the warmest day of the year suffer in northern ireland and sunshine in south east wales with temperatures of 20 degrees. the extent of the sunshine from earlier today breaking up the cloud across southern england, although low in aberdeen and has been cooler. we should keep their cloud feeding across the see developing widely in northern england and eventually central england, then further west in the countryside there is

temperatures won't be far from freezing. these are the numbers more likely in towns. essentially mandate will be a west— ease split, a cool breeze of the north sea bringing cloud over central and eastern parts of the uk with more sunshine at towards the west. but even with the sunshine and temperatures will be lower than today but we are still looking at mid to high teens across south—west scotland and also northern ireland and the cloud may break across north—east england at times but through the midlands, yorkshire, linkage, east anglia, a lot of cloud around, sunshine for wales and in the south—west i7 degrees likely, more in the way of cloud the midlands and the south—east as well, particularly chilly near those north sea coasts with the wind of the sea. the winds are coming from an area of high pressure that extends back towards greenland and that is dominating our weather for the start of the week at least. again a lot of dry weather on

tuesday, just a few showers in the far north—east of scotland, a bit more cloud further west, not as much sunshine on to say, that cloud spreading out a little, bright and sunny spells almost everywhere, temperatures typically into the mid—teens. more cloud around on tuesday, still high pressure on wednesday although things change later in the chances of some potentially heavy rain later in the week. this is bbc news. i'm martine croxall. the headlines at 11pm: emmanuel macron triumphs over his far—right adversary in the french presidential election. he's set to be the country's youngest head of state since napoleon. to make a will

translation: i will respect this and be faithful to the commitment taken. i will protect the public. but more than a third of french voters chose marine le pen's hard—right vision for france — she insists her agenda is now in the mainstream of political debate. translation: i will be at the head ofa translation: i will be at the head of a battle for all those who choose to protect french independence,