people are me 5” 5555, 5.5.5 5.55.54.»- ..- franchise. people are saying that. both people are stupid. franchise. people are saying that. both people are stupidli franchise. people are saying that. both people are stupid. i am interested in when the second woman will come on and get the same role. that will tell us a lot. or someone who is not white will stop oh my goodness! steady on, steady on! one thing at a time! back to the telegraph, if you would, please. if i may, to quote ruth. bbc offers stars protection. this is because the high—paid so—called talent, a word i can't abide, is going to be published in a list. those earning more than £150,000. the bbc is worried about the safety of some people. i think the abuse levels are 110w people. i think the abuse levels are now so people. i think the abuse levels are now so awful, but whether you are, i can understand that. there is a

suggestion here that people are so worried for themselves and their families that they might need to be protected, ruth. indeed. i must say, in the general election, there was a lot of abuse potential mps, which was deeply worrying. it seems to have come into our culture that if you see somebody in the public arena, you can just you see somebody in the public arena, you canjust abuse them. i'm quite horrified by it, actually. what is the bbc meant to do? there has been pressure for the bbc to be more transparent about who gets paid what at a higher level. and i think they are right. this is a public service broadcaster, and we know, for example, how much money some vice chancellors are getting in universities, and they don't like those numbers published because it does them no good at all. it has to happen if you are in a public service. what sort of protection will the bbc offer these people? i can understand why they are doing it. it will cost more money. i am

appalled by the online abuse. it. it will cost more money. i am appalled by the online abusem will also show the range, which will be interesting. it will. that's it for the papers for this hour, but don't forget, all the front pages are online on the bbc news website, seven days a week. each edition is also posted on the iplayer if you miss it, shortly after we finish. ruth and yasmin will be back again at 11:30pm. next, it is meet the author. there isn't a single full stop in mike mccormack‘s novel solar bones. the story is a monologue that reads like a string of thoughts — sometimes poetic, sometimes rough, often disturbing. and they tell us about one man in one hour, on one day — all souls' day — in rural ireland. his hopes and his disappointments, his fears and loves.

a character is revealed and so is the world in which he has to live. this is a adventurous storytelling by a master craftsman. welcome. it's quite a bold thing to do, to write a novel of more than 250 pages in paperback in one sentence. it is, but you write the book that presents themselves to you and that's the way the book, the way solar bones presented itself to me. you mean in its content, in the thoughts that you were dealing with, and not as a conscious matter of form — it just seemed that was the way you should write it down? very early on in the composition of the book, i realised that the narrator was the sort of person he was, and that he would speak

in a continuous rolling rhythm. and once i had got that in my mind, it became second nature. and it recalled in it one of the exercises i had set myself years ago as a writer was to come in every morning and sit down at my desk and write whatever it was that came into my head. and to...the only strictures i put on it was that it had to transition neatly from what i had done the day before and that it had to sustain rolling rhythm. and so when i realised the book was going to be written in a continuous ongoing rhythm, i recalled that exercise. there is a naturalfeeling, i think, most readers will have, of a kind of joycean inheritance here. it would be hard to think that you didn't havejoyce somewhere in your head when you were producing a book of this kind. people have spoken about the book as a stream of consciousness novel and i would dispute that.

it doesn't have that kind of telegraphic staccato rhythms that you associate with stream of consciousness. it's much more an attempt to write something continuous, ongoing and rolling. however, as an irish writer, i've always been conscious of the fact that our great writers are experimental writers and i wanted to... i've always admired their recklessness, and courage and the generosity of those writers. so i would like as a writer to think that you had a part of that yourself, so that was where i took my... recklessness is a very good word. yeah! and of course you're writing not just about an individual whose thoughts are happy and sad and confused, and sometimes crystal clear, and whose emotions are laid bare, you are writing about ireland. yes. and you are writing about a feeling of a country coming out of, really an economic catastrophe. which has impacted on people's lives in a very direct way so it's a very contemporary novel in that sense.

it is, and again that was... you never set out to, i didn't set out to write a novel of the crash or post crash. basically what i set out to do was to capture the mind and life of this one man, this engineer. and as an engineer, as a civil engineer, that puts him at a nexus of a whole series of forces — politics, economics, all sorts of social movements and everything like that. even civic catastrophes like contamination of water systems and everything. the allure for me about marcus conway is that he's an engineer and engineers make the world. god gave us heaven and earth and then he hands it over to engineers. and engineers make the world, and i was interested in seeing this man, who has this complete involvement with the world he makes, and that. so that was what i found attractive about him. well, you talk about

the engineering, you also dropped in god there, and of course the book unfolds on all souls' day, the idea that there are these souls drifting around all over the place. it begins with the tolling of the angelus bell and that bell seems to toll right through the book. i mean, you talk of its rhythmic character and the way it rolls on, and i suppose the sound of that as a kind of call to prayer, it really goes right through the book from beginning to end, doesn't it? the book is an hour long and it's suspended between two temporal markers. one is the divine marker at 12 o'clock and the other is the temporal marker for the one o'clock news at one o'clock, so the book is spanned between... it's an hour—long but in that hour he gets, he's inundated with a cascade of memories of his whole life. he's a soul who's susceptible to that kind of thing. and he himself remarks about that hour in the middle of the day.

he always found it a soft, strange hour in which the morning's best energies are gone and it's too early to sit down for the dinner, and the one o'clock news hasn't happened yet so it's betwixt and between and it seems to be susceptible to people like him. there's a fatalism running through the book too, a sense that things aren't random, that they appear to be random but... and he talks about putting one foot in front of the other and just carrying on. we're doomed to go through this journey in a very deliberate and inevitable way, aren't we? yes. i don't know if it's fatalism. endurance is his own... is a nobility in itself and a heroism in itself and the book is... the book is a hymn to the everyday in many senses, and it's a hymn to a world that he has put his faith in, not only has he built but he's put his faith in. i think the longer i've dwelt on it after i've written it,

the more it has kind of revealed itself to me as a book about faith. he went looking for god at an early stage in his life, and god effectively gave him two fingers and told him to go away and not be annoying him and that. and he turned from god and he became an engineer. and as his son says, his son puts it, he says, you turned from the cross and you took up the theodolite, and the cross hairs of a theodolite. you laid that on the world and that. so it's a book about faith and a book about the everyday. it's a hymn to engineers and engineering. you talk about the experimental tradition in so much irish writing. you think of beckett, for example. yes. and that sort of heartbeat in his dramatic prose is the kind of thing you sense in your writing. you feel it the whole time. it was very much... the heartbeat and the idea of a pulse was very much a concern with me in the book, and i don't know whether i managed

to capture it or not but it was certainly one of the things i aspired to. of course being steeped in beckett as well, you assimilate these things by osmosis and they become a part of your fabric as a writer, as an irish writer. you talk about being an irish writer. do you ever find that it's a bit weighty and a bit imprisoning? no, i certainly don't. i've always considered myself to be an irish writer, whatever that means, but for me it meant tapping into that reckless and generous tradition of experiment that distinguishes our greatest writers. our greatest writers were unusual, i think, in that our greatest writers, our greatest fiction writers are exclusively our experimental writers. beckett and joyce and flann 0'brien, the father, son and holy ghost,

that's our mount rushmore. and if you're talking about any other writers, you've lowered your eyesight, you've lowered your gaze from those three. so i wanted to take my cue from their experimental tradition and did it tentatively in notes from a coma, my prior novel, but i think grabbed it a bit more two—handedly in solar bones. mike mccormack, thank you very much for talking about solar bones. thank you. good evening. after a mostly cloudy saturday, things brightened up quite nicely for most of us during sunday, and we take that bright weather with us and we take that bright weather with us into the start of the new week. temperatures will climb as well. by wednesday, 30 celsius in some places, but that could spark some

thunderstorms. 0nce places, but that could spark some thunderstorms. once they clear away, she will —— we will see temperatures dropping away and it will be cooler. today saw sunshine in northern ireland, cloud in southern parts of england, but we should clear that way through the night. for the vast majority, it will be dry with clear spells. all was blustery across northern and western scotland, with a little showery rain here at times. 0vernight lows of 15 celsius. if you like warm and sunny weather, tomorrow is shaping up to be a beautiful day — blue skies and sunshine forjust beautiful day — blue skies and sunshine for just about all of us. some showery rain across northern scotland, and some extra cloud across the south coast of inward, which could turn the sunshine hazy. it won't stop temperatures getting up it won't stop temperatures getting up to maybe 27 celsius in the south—east. fine across wales,

northern england, northern ireland, and the vast majority of scotland. across the far north, it will stay cloudy and blustery, with a little showery rain continuing across the northern isles. high—pressure is the cause of the fine weather. the high will drift further east on tuesday, bringing in warm airfrom the near continent, quite humid air as well. sunshine will turn hazy across england and wales. late in the day on tuesday, a hint that we could start the see scattered thunderstorms breaking out down towards the south—west. before those arrive, temperatures of 27 celsius in northern scotland, and maybe 30 celsius in parts of england and wales. with their heat in place, it looks like showers and storms will become more widespread and will drift north through tuesday night into wednesday. further scattered thunderstorms across wednesday in england and wales. 0nce thunderstorms across wednesday in england and wales. once the storm is clear away, it will then turn cooler

and fresher. this is bbc news. i'm martine croxall. the headlines at 11:00: the chancellor criticises cabinet colleagues for briefing against him as he defends his position on public sector pay. public sector workers on average are paid about 10% more than private sector workers... are they overpaid? relatively to sack the workers they are paid a 10% premium. the timelords — they are a—changing — jodie whittaker is to become the first woman to play doctor who. commentator: what a player. roger federer makes history at wimbledon, becoming the first man to win the singles title eight times. if you believe you can go really fire in your life and i think i did that and i happy. i