the than it is and they say centre the boats back to libya. that is silly. it is complicated. it is horrible. james, if you can sum up what we are talking about on the front page of the metro. bad news if you work in the metro. bad news if you work in the nhs? it is a striking headline, nurses quitting in thousands. the only thing i would say is they don't seem to have figures for the numbers joining the nhs. if more arejoining them leaving, it is not a problem. i suspect that is not the case. there are also issues about eu nationals working in the nhs and those numbers are going down as well. it is perhaps again a little more complex thanis perhaps again a little more complex than is being portrayed in that headline, i think. do than is being portrayed in that headline, ithink. do you than is being portrayed in that headline, i think. do you think that number could be arrested if we have the cap on the pay increase lifted? nurses and the nhs are one of the sectors which people have been talking about. i think it will help with those issues of plunging morale, but it is notjust about pay in the nhs, there is a serious funding crisis in the nhs going

forwards, and it is a bigger picture than just pay, i forwards, and it is a bigger picture thanjust pay, i think. forwards, and it is a bigger picture thanjust pay, ithink. let's forwards, and it is a bigger picture thanjust pay, i think. let's go forwards, and it is a bigger picture than just pay, i think. let's go to the telegraph and our story here is the telegraph and our story here is the cabinet flipped over austerity, oh, my goodness, austerity, here we go again! again, it is another story we will get for the next few years. splits in the cabinet as the big beasts jostle for position and jostle for money as well. it looks like the i% jostle for money as well. it looks like the 1% public sector pay cap will get bust. it is a question of when and who benefits politically. this is a really interesting story, both because it is about austerity which will come back again and again, but also this is one of the first issues which the new cabinet of the new parliament has really argued over, and what really comes across as a lot of cabinet ministers who were maybe lying low or taking the party line a couple of months ago, are standing up for their departments and what they want.

michael gove has said it should be lifted or it could be lifted. philip hammond has said if we have lots of extra spending we might need some unpopular extra taxes. so far no one has spoken about breaking the pensions triple lock which would be my personal way of dealing with that. you have justine greening and heads of departments dealing with a week prime minister they can come out of the woodwork and make their voices heard. i agree that the cap will get removed in some way, but regardless of how this one turns out, to brace yourself for many, many more battles like this. how this turns out will impact the battles because theresa may could be weakened further by this. they want to tell people they are listening and that possibly will not be good enough. there is talk of waiting until the autumn budget to break the pay cap. that will be three or four months of battles and whining and she will get weaker and weaker. very

quickly, i want tojump she will get weaker and weaker. very quickly, i want to jump ahead to the express. this is what everybody is talking about. wimbledon kicks off tomorrow. defending his title is andy murray but he may have a lucky charm in the wings in the form of... yes, his second baby richie said is on the way. don't think it is imminent! there was one question about whether he would even play at the last one. i suspect it will come down to his hip which seems to be his problem going into wimbledon?- is playing the lucky loser from kazakhstan. we are not very good at cheering somebody who actually wins things so i wish him all the best of luck tomorrow and i want to remind everyone that he has a baby on the way but serena williams who is not playing wimbledon because she has a baby on the way, she won a grand slam title when she was pregnant. yes, she is waiting to drop, as they

say! thank you bray much, james and rachel. we are back at 11:30pm. the headlines are coming up. coming up next, it's meet the author. the irish writer paula mcgrath‘s novel, a history of running away, is about three women separated by time and place, who are all trying to escape the circumstances of their lives. they're all connected although we don't know how at the start of the book and their stories are about a society that seems to thwart them at every turn, but then perhaps begins to offer something different, and something hopeful. welcome. what fascinated you about these three women who are apart but connected ?

i began with jasmine, who's our 1980s character who decides that she wants to box. which wasn't allowed at that time for women. that's right, yes, which i didn't realise initially. i had an image of a character, which is unusual for me because usually i forget to write what they look like at all. but this character was extremely vivid to me. she had... she was the 1980s rural only goth in the village so i knew my setting would be ‘80s, and i knew it was rural ireland to begin with. she runs away from home because she wants to join legs & co initially, but the bbc gave her short shrift and she ends up back in dublin and discovers boxing. at the time i was starting to think about this novel in the beginning, i was fascinated by katie taylor, the irish boxer. she was fighting for olympic gold, and there was something about the fact boxing had been illegal and now she was

winning a gold medal. did you have any feelings about women's boxing? not really, it wasn't something i wanted to do. i had one attempt at kick boxing and fell out of the gym. it was very strenuous so i had no objection but no real interest myself. so let's talk about the other two principal characters, since we have started off with jasmine. jasmine led me back to her mother's story, and through her to ali, who is a recently orphaned teenager who was running away from her grandparents — grandparents that she didn't know until recently she has. she's in maryland in the states and it's not clear what the connection is between the characters to the reader at this point. the other narrator is a gynaecologist in present—day dublin and she's increasingly frustrated with her working conditions. so, they are all imprisoned in different ways? yes, you could say that.

they feel the need to run. in any case, they all run, and injasmine's case she runs away twice. i suppose we have our fight or flight options and they go for flight each time. the gynaecologist is on the brink, she is trying to decide whether to stay. they have all got great difficulties either because of intimate relationships, work, family or by the social pressures around them, and they seem to be trying to escape. but there's a feeling in the book that things in that respect may be getting better. is that how you feel? i did feel that from looking at the boxing story certainly, things were getting better. obviously katie taylor is a shining example of why women should be allowed to decide whether or not they want to box. it's not for everybody but there were and still are other things that women can't do, that they're not allowed to decide for themselves. and i don't feel that that's getting better. it needs to change but there was an anger underlying the writing of the book.

it was inescapable for me, and i think for many, to think you are living at home in ireland in a society which has changed radically really in the last, even the last decade. the country has gone through an economic crash, a recovery, and now seems to be booming again. it has a sort of irrepressible self—confidence about it. you've lived through a very dramatic period in the history of ireland, haven't you? yes, starting from the ‘80s, i came to dublin to college in the ‘80s and it feels to me that we have come, in a way, almost a full circle, a second recession. going back to be abortion referendum again, it happened in the early ‘80s and yet we're back again in 2014, 2016, 2017, and there's fresh new scandals. so, although ireland

has come a long way, the hold of the catholic church has been broken to some extent, i think the effects of that have yet to be felt, for women at any rate. for anybody who talks to people about these events, you realise how profound the change has been, how profound the questioning is of the kinds of assumptions there were in the generation before yours. i mean the society is a much more mobile, open one than it's ever been before in modern times. yes, and i tried with the book to show, and i think this is why i ended up with three different narrators and brought them together, just to show that the underlying theme that the irish state's relationship with women's bodies has been... difficult i suppose, historically, and still is but things have changed. so back in the ‘50s we had mother baby homes, then we had this abortion referendum,

and now we have katie taylor winning gold, but we still have to go to the next stage. this is no coincidence that one of the main characters is a gynaecologist. no, coincidence, no! and another is a boxer. obviously there's a mystery involved in the story, a set of mysteries, but it's not a tease for the reader. i mean, it's really a story that's meant to have you thinking about their characters and the difficulties and how they cope with them, isn't it? that's really what drives you. yes, it's the characters, each of them at their own stage, trying to figure out where they are in their lives and what they want and who they are in a way, as they also gradually come to discover or the reader comes to discover who they are. irish writing is in such a healthy state — there are young novelists, young poets, young storytellers in ireland which is, you know, is a small country. the rich literary tradition really is still alive, isn't it? very much so.

yes. are you conscious of that? i am conscious of it. there's a lot of support out there. tax breaks and vibrant literary journals. i think literature is something we take seriously. i'm not too sure why, whether it's economic or whatever — it's pretty cheap to sit down and write! i think these tax breaks don't really cost the government very much but they do kind of foster a community. but when you say you don't know why, i think that if you talk to some of the sort of world—renowned irish writers of today, they all say, look, you know, if you come from the small country that produced joyce and beckett and flann o'brien, then you really are always conscious you have got kind of an obligation to these great figures that are standing on your shoulders. yes, they are quite intimidating and for a long time i think

i studied literature in college and that's probably why i found it so difficult to get started as a writer... because you were aware of what's behind you! exactly, yeah. where do you think — this is your second novel, generation was the first couple of years ago — where is your writing going to take you, do you think? well, i know where it's taking me at the moment. i'm working on a third novel. what kind of theme has that got? the theme of trauma, if that doesn't sound too off—putting! oh, it's not off—putting. multiple trauma... you can't have a novel where nothing happens, nothing exciting. no, and i'm conscious of all of what might have become cliches of irish writing. i don't want the child abuse story, i want multiple traumas that can be read that are palatable to the reader, so that's what i'm working on. and avoiding the irish cliche. trying hard! paula mcgrath, thank you very much indeed. thank you. hello once again. ijust want

hello once again. i just want to update you on how we will start the new week. it will be on the mild side on central and southern parts. brighter skies in northern scotland. quite a bit of cloud associated with this front. there will be some rain through wales and the south—west of england as the game roll fun. we will drag a line of showers down towards the south—east. somewhat brighter skies following on behind. high of 23 or 24. feeling very warm across the south—eastern quarter. through the evening and overnight, we will push this area of cloud and rain and a new set of weather fronts through. to the south, it is quite close. to the north, brighter skies,

the temperature only 13, 14 or 15. more details for the rest of the week online. this is bbc news. the headlines at 11:00pm: more signals that the 1% pay cap for public sector workers could be coming to an end. environment secretary michael gove suggests recommendations from independent panels may be accepted. plans to restrict foreign fishing boats' access to british waters, as the government prepares to pull out of a key agreement. a new wave of migrants from north africa. italy struggles to cope with the 80,000 migrants that have arrived on its shores since the start of the year. also in the next hour: stephen hawking takes donald trump to task over climate change. he warns the president's decision to pull out of the paris accord could lead to global warming becoming irreversible. reigning champion andy murray prepares to take to centre court. tomorrow he will start his campaign

for a third wimbledon title.