debutants including nathan earle who was first across over the line... england scored three tries in all, the second from another new face, that of nick isiekwe. danny care claimed the third as they won 28—14. ben ainslie's great britain team are back in action in the america's cup qualifiers in bermuda. they had to work through the night to repair damage to the boat's hull that was sustained in a high speed collision yesterday. things did not go according to plan on the water. they lost oracle, team usa. they do have one more race this evening. great britain have won four medals at the european rowing championships in the czech republic. vicky thornley at the top of the screen added gold in the women's single sculls to the olympic silver she won with katherine grainger in the double sculls in rio last year.

thornley held off a determined late burst from 44—year—old bela russian ekaterina karsten, a two—time olympic champion. and one cricket line to bring you... england play south africa in the third and final one day international at lords tomorrow — eoin morgan's side already have an unassailable 2—0 lead in the series. moeen ali, ben stokes and chris woakes have all been rested so there are three fresh faces — middlesex pair steven finn and toby roland—jones and hampshire spinner liam dawson have been drafted in. that's all from sportsday. there'll be more sport on the bbc news channel throughout the evening. next on bbc news, its meet the author. ann patchett is a novelist who spends her stories

without letting the effort show. they race along with the complexities and their rich subtleties, subsumed into a narrative that never seems to flag. commonwealth is a story of american life told over nearly five decades from the early 60s when a gate—crasher at a christening sets in train a series of chance events that change two families forever. welcome. why do you think it is that so many readers want to come back so often to family stories? it is the universal, after all. it is the one thing that we all have. we were all a baby, we will all die, we all had parents, and it is irresistible,

it is what we know. and this begins, as i was saying, at a christening, with a gate—crasher. it is quite a thing to gate—crash a christening. and then chance events unfold over quite a long period which determine the fate really of a couple of families and all sorts of people. you are fascinated by the business of chance, aren't you? iam. i think that chance propels plot. a chance is the nature of story. of course it is something that i am always going to come back to. it is hard to write a really compelling novel when everything is nailed down, when there are no loose bits. to look at it from the other angle, readers are willing to forgive quite a lot of chance and coincidence, aren't they, in the interests of a good story? i think they are but also it has to be plausible chance and coincidence or it has to be reckless. i remember a paul auster novel

called moon palace years and years ago where everything was crazy coincidence but it was so crazy and so consistent that the novel was really brilliant. yes. people always talk about thomas hardy who was the master of coincidence and who drove his plot by some of the most unlikely devices. the letter going under the carpet. angel clare's carpet. yeah, that is fabulous. are you a hardy person? i am a hardy person. i like the way that sounds. are you a hardy person? yes, iam. who else do you read for pleasure among the great novelists? where does your taste take you? it is an interesting thing. i was a big henryjames person and somebody who would reread james over and over again, loved dickens, loved austen, but i own a book shop now, and i have for going on six years, and those days are over for me. now ijust read not only things that are just out, the things i read are the things that will be coming out in six months.

this is a confession. henryjames, once you get stuck into henryjames he is impossible to abandon, isn't he? no, i will never abandon henry james. i will always go back every few years and reread the awkward age. that is the thing. it is not that i want to read more james. i want to just keep rereading the ones that i love. it is interesting to look at that in respect of your own narrative because as i said, your narrative has the feeling of it has a pulse thatjust seems to keep going. you are a great one for concealing the inevitable artifice of writing. good. whereas james was a great one for putting the inevitable artifice of writing... absolutely. i wasn't influenced by him, ijust love him. i suspectjust reading your prose that you're one of these people once you start a story, although you work at it very hard, and i have no doubt you are very meticulous, it seems to just rattle along. the reason is that i make it all up in my head for a year or two

in advance and really work out all of the pieces. in your head rather than on a piece of paper? in my head. don't take notes. then i sit down and i actually start to write and it's miserable and it's hard but i get it all fixed as i go along, so i write a chapter and then work on that chapter for two months. then i go onto the next chapter. the book takes place just over 50 years. a lot of people, there are 11 main characters in this book. a lot of different locations. so i had to know what all of the moving parts were and where i was going. quite a balancing act. yes. and that's something that i love. when i read a novel or when i write a novel. it is juggling and if you throw those balls up in the air i want to see you catch them. when you talk about in the past having read a lot of dickens, and of course in those great books of his, that is what it's all about. yes. this extraordinary balancing of different plotlines, different characters.

yes. but all somehow being kept in balance in some almost magical way. and that's very important because you have to have a balance and an equality in the tension of the narrative or what happens is the reader is interested in one plot line more than the other. so they'll read the part they don't like very quickly so they can get back to the character they are interested in. you have to make sure that all of the characters are in a way equally compelling so that the reader is reading at the same rate. you've made an added difficulty for yourself in this book because it covers about half a century. it begins in 1964. actually a difficult time in your country. it was the transition to a new presidency, you had just had a president assassinated, which most people had never known before. it was a very sharp time in american history. was it easy to get yourself back to that period? it was because it is not about that per se. no.

certainly these people are living in that time and in 1964 it's probably the end of this world that you see at the opening of the novel, the family, strong catholicism, strong neighbour relations. the end of innocence? the end of innocence. then one character breaking off and kind of spinning out into the unknown world. in a way it's a sort of harbinger of what's to come because the process that americans went through in, let's say, the 20 years after the opening date of this novel was a tumultuous time in terms of social change, attitudes, all sorts of things were unrecognisable from the america of the 50s by the time it was over. it is interesting to me that you say 20 years. because i think of it almost like ten years. basically to the end of the vietnam war. yes.

to the middle of the 70s. by the time we had carter and then reagan in office we were heading back to the 50s. we were really tamping down. what really fascinates me, we could talk about this all day, what fascinates me about this is the way that you have found it possible, and very elegantly, to take us from that period right forward to a much more contemporary age without it ever intruding. characters have different attitudes to the world because they grow up in different times but the fundamentals of family do not change. correct. and our responsibilities to family. even as we get tired of them, even as we want them to go away, our responsibility, or pull backwards, is always going to be there. i don't want to ask you an embarrassing question... what could you possibly ask me? why do you think that so many readers have found you irresistible and continue to do so?

what is it do you think about the way that you cast a story on the potters' wheel that makes it readable? i had no idea that so many readers did find me irresistible. i am glad to hear it. who knows? the way i look at it is everybody has their own little chip of colour in the larger picture. their voice. and their own voice and what their interest is personally, so no matter how much i try to get away from it i'm always going to be writing books about class, about family, poverty and wealth. things that i keep coming back to even if i don't want to. that's my voice. it's a calm and kind sort of voice. if readers know it is authentic they will listen to it. i hope so. ann patchett, author of commonwealth, thank you very much. some of you may be wondering why i

have got this particular sphere behind me. it was a decent day across the british isles. it was until the cloud started thickening up until the cloud started thickening up of entry into the southern counties. we have already seen the odd moderate to heavy burst of rain, the odd rumble of thunder. we will continue that process to the rest of the evening and overnight, pushing the evening and overnight, pushing the rain up towards northern ireland and southern scotland, the north of england and the midlands. behind it we get into the really muggy air, it may well be that we see the return of some thunderstorms across central and southern england. notice how mild and how sticky it is again across the south, 14 or extreme degrees. much fresher further north where it stays dry for the first pa rt where it stays dry for the first part of bank holiday monday. that's not going to be the way of it because that cloud and rain will get pushed ever further north until it becomes really quite extensive across the northern half of the british isles. you will have to be far north in scotland or the

northern isles to stay dry until this point in the day. around about midday. the odd moderate burst of rain getting in across the western side of scotland, dank and drizzly fair. cloud sitting very low across the eastern side of the pennines. not without the chancellor rumble of thunder as those showers turned quite intense. there is that possibility as well of further muggy air moving in towards east anglia and the south—east. upping the chance of the odd rumble of thunder. a quiet affair in wales on the south—west, and after a rather dull start, perhaps a bit of brightness coming on. that will help to lift the temperature somewhat. 22, 20 three. some could exceed that, but with a bit of brightness and all this mild air across the south—east, nothing like it further north. underneath the cloud and rain, it does keep its progress going there, for the north. but it will be late in the day before we see any brightness in northern ireland and indeed the north of england. into

tuesday, notice the number of isobars here. this vigorous area of low pressure swings the weather front through us. tuesday and wednesday, forget low—pressure, it's hello high—pressure. with that high—pressure becoming dominant for the later part of tuesday through wednesday and the first part of thursday, things will turn dry and there will be some sunshine. this is bbc news. the headlines at eight: police hunting for the network behind the manchester suicide bombing have arrested a twenty a twenty five year—old man. police are also searching properties in the moss side, rusholme and gorton areas of manchester. the city itself stands defiant, as thousands take to the streets in the great manchester run. the conservatives and labour promise more action to minimise the threat of terror attacks in the wake of the manchester bombing. a second day of cancellations and delays, after a computer crash hit ba's global network. i've never seen anything like it in my life.

we've always flown ba, we've always been happy with ba, but now we've said no. i don't think we can trust them again. also in the next hour: more than 150 people are now known to have died in the storms and 2,000 homes destroyed in sri lanka's