you want some you have to raise it. you get a free tv licence but obviously the bbc need funding. interestingly, peers of the realm is, two of them, are in favour of means testing for these. they understand the cultural value but one wonders if you ask the same question about means testing for pensioners filled... 76 and 77 both of them. the issue is whether the means test actually lands. who in fact pays? all the policies we argue over the recent question of how rich you have to be before you start paying. and it is almost as much as the

entire cost of the national and local bbc radio. in the sunday express , local bbc radio. in the sunday express, the headline is ssh! which leads us on to the sunday mirror, and a little picture of george. poor old george burst into tears and there is a question of what happened. the sunday mirror reveals that george, whether by accident or design, stepped on pippa's train. you couldn't have done it i designed! one way or another he stepped on pippa's train, kate tears him offa stepped on pippa's train, kate tears him off a strip, he burst into tears and you get a wagging finger from kate, with that look on her face saying that is enough now. a p pa re ntly saying that is enough now. apparently he was quite happy later. picture of the year, i think it has to be the express. i think it is fantastic. you have missed out on

the picture of the year which would have taken place at this desk. anyway, that's it for the papers. thank you to you both. stay tuned. coming up next on bbc news, it is meet the author. enjoy. a great house with a great wall around it. we are in mid—17th century england at a time of religious strife when many lives are touched by danger and intrigue. then we are in the same house three centuries later in the grip of the cold war and living through the whole story of the berlin wall from start to finish. and witchwood, the house, a stage where some of the dramas of our own time are played out. peculiar ground is a fiercely ambitious novel by lucy hughes—hallett, stretching across centuries and telling the tale of tolerance and strife, imprisonment and the instinct to be free. welcome.

the house, witchwood, is in a way the central character of this book. did it come first? did you have the idea of a place, an enclosed place, in which all this might happen? yes, absolutely. and, as you say, the house is, it's not perhaps the central character, but it's the character that holds all of the story together because although the berlin wall does play quite a large part in this novel, but very few of my characters are allowed to go to berlin and i found as i was writing sometimes they needed to go off to london and to germany and i had to keep bringing them back for the story. it had a technical purpose that was very useful. but it has also got a sort

of moral purpose in a way because it is enclosed at the very beginning of the story. mr norris is laying out the landscape and the wall is being built and it is in a way a prison. yes. there is a moment in the book when mr norris, the landscape designer, is talking to his friend the architect and they ask each other, "is this a paradise we are making here or is it a prison?" and i wrote that rather sort of off—the—cuff as you do in a long book, it's just one line. it's the theme of the book. afterwards i thought, yes, that is what it's about. it's about inclusion and of course it's about all sorts of other things like falling in love and having children and dying and doing all the things that humans do, but in so far as there is a theme that can be summed up in the sentence it is a book about walls and what happens when you try to wall yourself in and you may make

a garden or you may find yourself trapped inside. it's also a story about how we are doomed to repeat the awful experiences of humanity again and again down the centuries. absolutely, yes. i mean, there was a moment when i was writing the first draft, of actually the last section of the book in which people are walking out of london in 1665 to escape from the plague and the roads out of london are crammed with refugees, migrants. and as i was writing that section the newspapers were full of pictures of roads crammed with migrants trying to walk their way into safety and a better life in europe. and i hadn't set out to write a book about the migration crisis but, as you say, history repeats itself. history repeats itself in all kinds of ways because at the time when we first encounter the house, the grounds are being laid out,

it is just before the restoration in the 16605 and it's a time of darkness, of a lot of espionage, of a lot of betrayal and violence. it was a much more turbulent time for individuals. i think when you look back at history people tend to remember it as a dark time. absolutely, i think in the sort of popular imagination charles ii is the merry monarch and he comes back and the theatres reopen and they are tossing oranges around and everyone is having a lovely time, but one has to remember that all those people are living in the aftermath of a full generation of civil war. everyone has got something to hide, everyone is suspicious of everybody else. so in the first and last sections of my novel which i set in the 16605 i wanted not to explicitly, but just to suggest that tension, that feeling of things going on behind closed doors, and mysteries. you are dealing the whole time

with what is unsaid, which is as important in the kinds of situations you are imagining here, as what is said and what is put on the table. yes. i did an awful lot of crossing out. the way i write is to write a draft and then go over and over and over it and each time it gets shorter. so a lot of what might have been explicit in the first draft has vanished from the finished book. and i think that in a way that is the rest of the iceberg so you are left with a visible tip. but it's important to the finished product, i think, that at some point i did know what was being said. and i cut it out. you excised it. and that is what produces tension, it is what produces fear, it is what produces i suppose alarm

and a feeling of threat. yes and in the 17th century there is quite a lot of magic. i don't believe in the supernatural at all, everything has a rational explanation, but the supernatural of one era is simply the unexplained so that there are things going on which seem particularly alarming because we don't understand. that might be because science has yet progressed far enough to explain, or it might be because indeed someone is deliberately keeping a secret. or because in part we have an affection for the unknown and the need for the unknown, not simply giving a name to the inexplicable, but there is something attractive about the feeling that things are going on in a way that we can't quite understand. yes, i think one of the great things about fiction whether as a reader or a writer, it allows you to live a life that is slightly larger and more interesting than your own.

i am struck by the title. peculiar is a very interesting word to use about this house, a solid, a wonderful place to live with wonderful grounds as we see them being laid out at the beginning of the book, and of course the confining wall. why "peculiar"? well, it's a phrase from a hymn. "we are a garden wall around a sacred place, peculiar ground." and the word "peculiar" has changed its meaning over the three centuries covered in this story and it has always meant set apart, different. it has now become to mean odd and a bit weird, but in its original meaning is simply means reserved, enclosed, set apart from the rest of the world. so the house is peculiar, but it also contained in it everything about humanity that we recognise. yes.

the thing that holds us altogether. great country houses are very useful as a novelist or for film—makers or whatever for the same reason that pubs are. everyone has to go to the pub an inordinate amount because if you can get your characters together under one roof then things can start to happen between them. and a great country house is of course a place for parties, a place in which a rich and glamorous life can be led, but it's also a business, it's a place where a of people can work. far too many novels are just about who is going to bed with whom, a very interesting question, but we do actually spend our lives, most of us, most of the time, working and i like to show the gamekeepers gamekeeping and the foresters looking after the trees. we get to know the life of witchwood very well indeed in peculiar ground. lucy hughes—hallett,

thank you very much. thank you. hello there. if you escaped today's downpours, you are one of the lucky few. tomorrow, the majority should stay dry. we have had some wonderful weather watcher photos sent in. please do keep sending them. this is one of my favourites because it shows the carpet of hail down district and we have beautiful sunset pictures, that is one of my particular favourites. the showers have faded away really quickly through the evening. rain across scotla nd through the evening. rain across scotland as well. we are left with a couple of issues overnight. plus we have had so much moisture we could have had so much moisture we could have some fog as we head towards morning and under clear skies between now and dawn we could have a touch of grass frost, three to four

degrees celsius away from freezing. and that fog could clear away quickly and that temperatures should trump up as we have high levels of uv at this time of year. it is made, the equivalent of latejuly in terms of sunshine and we are only a month away from the longest day, the shortest night. into the teens, quite early on, the flame the ointment is this band of rain and a wea k ointment is this band of rain and a weak weather front. only patchy rain meandering north into scotland later on. just a few hours of cloud, spots of rain. showers to the north—east of rain. showers to the north—east of scotla nd of rain. showers to the north—east of scotland so perhaps the odd sharp one here but elsewhere, few and far between. most of us will be a dry day. more likely across scotland and the far of england, showers. as a consequence, more the far of england, showers. as a consequence, more sunshine and lighter winds. temperatures will be higher than those of today, and it will certainly feel warmer then it will certainly feel warmer then it will turn chilly tomorrow evening and overnight, with another touch of grass frost in similar areas, and by

monday morning rush, we have patchy rain. it crosses from northern ireland into scotland. that is the fly in the ointment for monday's weather. it will not be a wash out, plenty of sunshine and till some warmth. temperatures creeping up where we have sunshine across england and wales. but that will migrate northwards. it is with us further south as well, if you are lucky enough to be heading off to the french open at roland garros. fine and dry weather on monday. tuesday some sunshine. the same area of high pressure will be enveloping the uk, pushing those weather fronts out of the way. tuesday and wednesday they are gone from the north as well and we have some warmth and some sunshine coming through for many. difficult to say exactly how much sunshine but given the strength of the sunshine, most of us will have a dry wit and increasingly warm. humid as well, meaning warm by day at the other sultry by night. —— and rather

sultry by night. —— and rather sultry by night. —— and rather sultry by night. this is bbc news. our top stories: donald trump has enjoyed saudi arabia's finest welcome so far but will he be able to strike the right note with sunday's key speech on islam? earlier the president was awarded the kingdom's top civilian honour — before signing deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars. iran's president hassan rouhani says his re—election shows people want reform —— and to continue to engage with the world. translation: yesterday you said no to all those who are inviting us to return to the past. but remained stuck in the present. you have put us stuck in the present. you have put us back on the road to progress. brazil's president calls for an investigation into his alleged corruption to be halted.