who are on the most of the women who are on the list are in acts with other men. kate tempest is an artist is very exciting on the list. but there is not enough. there are only about four acts that have women included in the band and certainly charlie xcx, you made this really weird problem that broke the boundaries of what music might sound like did not make the cut, whereas a very traditional indie band like blossoms, the kind of thing that you know how it sounds, it is a bit old—fashioned, that they'd get on the list. so what you're after is something that is about the #alot something that is about the # a lot more forward looking at and who would you like to be on it?” think charlie xcx is an interesting one i think it is surprising that radiohead did not make the cut. they had a very good album this year. i think they have some interesting people. they have some unlikej—hus

who is on the list. this is a person who is on the list. this is a person who is on the list. this is a person who is a kind of hub between grime and the afro beat sound that is coming from africa and the dance hall sound that is coming from jamaica and this kid is mixing all of those different sounds into something new. he is very exciting. it is the sort of music you hear being too boomed out at house parties and it is great that they have honoured that and i hope he is in with a shot. it is almost like hearing a foreign—language being spoken when i listen to what you are saying, so it has been an education for me. thank you very much. nice to talk to you. i may as well admit it. in a moment: the headlines on bbc news: the un says yemen are struggling with the cholera outbreak. there may be grounds for corporate

manslaughter with regards to the g re nfell tower manslaughter with regards to the grenfell tower disaster. amber rudd says there will be a period of adaption when the new changes coming after brexit. an update on the market numbers for you — here's how london's and frankfurt ended the day. and in the the united states this is how the dow and the nasdaq are getting on. now, on meet the author, jim naughtie talks to conn iggulden, an historical fiction novelist who has recently turned to fantasy writing. you've decided to cast away historical setting and get rid of real characters that we might know and gone into fantasy — if it's a word you're happy with. why?

i've always loved historicalfiction. i've always read it and my entire career has been built around it, but i've also always read fantasy and the big difference, to some extent, is the freedom. in historicalfiction, you have to check every single fact, otherwise somebody will e—mail you — a roman re—enactor, something along those lines. but with fantasy it felt like i had a slightly... the reins were off. i didn't have to stop in the middle of a scene and think, "did they have sidesaddle in this particular...?" "hang on, she's a woman on a horse, would she have "been riding sidesaddle?" which is my constant experience in historicalfiction. you make it up. well, exactly, you have that freedom. in historicalfiction, you do feel the constraints because it has to be as accurate as possible, you have to find a story in the real history. of course, you've got an army of readers and they've enjoyed ancient rome, the mongol empire, the wars of the roses, and so on. they've trusted me. they've trusted you. and they've felt at home, they've enjoyed the setting.

it's risky, you know, taking them into a city that doesn't exist. it is and it's almost like starting again. there's no way to sugar that pill. it is a completely different audience. some people won't touch it. i've always thought that historical fiction and fantasy are the closest genres. there are certain elements — the thrill of a battle, for example, can be very similar. of course. and it depends how you do it. i don't have any dragons in mind, although george rr martin has done very well with them. well, there's a bit of magic in this book. it's not harry potter magic in the sense that lives aren't governed by it, but it's very much there. there's a kind of superstition that becomes real. yes. the point about it really is i wanted to have as few constraints as possible. an awful lot of stories, at their heart, are about characters making some discovery about themselves and i wanted to use magic to bring those discoveries about. i wanted characters to be able to move on and through various devices and then bring them all together at the end. we are talking about a city whose great era is passed.

i mean, it's a bit like venice with the empire gone. yes, they're worn out. it's all worn out. tired. and there is an unhappy figure on the throne. this is a very familiar setting, in a way, for an historical novelist. a miserable young man and various families all struggling for power. to some extent, there's always that basis in reality. you can't simply have, i don't know, walls disappearing in the middle of a scene. you have to have it as real as possible and then add that extra element that i've always fantasised about myself, which is the ability to do something extraordinary. that's what makes a good story, iwould hope. there's an interesting comparison between this book, which i think is the beginning of a trilogy, is that right? the empire of salt. well, we'll see if you can control yourself and keep it as a trilogy. it will be the first trilogy i've ever done. it might end up being four. you are very prolific. dunstan came out only two, three months ago, and that's an interesting book, because it's set, as it has been your wont up to now, in a particular historical period, in the england of what people misleadingly called the dark ages.

it's told in the first person, which you've never done before. no. to some extent, i do like to challenge myself, but i came across dunstan when i was reading dickens's a child's history of britain to my children, as i'm sure you do. he described dunstan, who was a saint and archbishop of canterbury, as a complete rogue and involved in the selling into slavery of a queen. so... you thought, "hang on." i thought this is a good character here. i thought if he's both a monster and a saint at the same time, then i've got another genghis khan, if you like, which is too strong. but i liked genghis because he was hated by his enemies and loved by his own family. i look for that sort of humanising quality. i want them to be rich and varied and interesting, as he is. and, of course, it's a very interesting period in english history. it is, it's fascinating, because its book ended by athelstan, the first king of england, who also was king of scotland. yes. yes, constantine came down. he had coins made with "rex totius britanniae", and a fair claim to being an actual king of britain.

but, of course, that only lasted as long as his short reign, which is 14 years. it's 910—988, something like that. 400 years after the romans had been their for half a millennium. and, of course, you've written about caesar and augustus and the rest of them and this is the beginning, really, after a gap, of what happened after the romans had gone. yes, to some extent this is the run—up, of course, to 1066. these are the kings that people probably don't know, but they are the only ones with great stories. and the nice thing about dunstan is his life crossed seven kings, so he went from athelstan at the beginning to ethelred the unready and, through those seven kings, we have the beginning of the modern world. and you've told the story through dunstan's voice. yes. a wonderful opening line, i hope i've got it right — what is an opening line but a door being opened by an unseen hand? something like that, sorry if i've got... but opening lines are important. that's a good one. it is, but that's the beginning of the prologue. the beginning of the first chapter is "i think i could have hung there all day if they hadn't

broken my hands." which i... you see, for me, i do like that a little more. the whimsical quality of writing in the first person meant that i had this old man's voice. and as i was saying earlier, i had to cut some of that out, because you couldn't be too rambling. what's the difficulty of writing in an old man's voice? you're not an old man. no, but i've known a few. my father was 90 when he died and i'm familiar with the way they tell stories, as i heard them so many times. the trouble with that is an old man will tell the same story more than once. i was playing with the fact could i actually do that in a text? and the answer is no, honestly, you can't. if you're writing about a young man, described by the old man, you have to do the young man's voice, you have to to cut out some of the querulousness of the old man. yes. just to keep it tight and fast moving, because i do like the reader to turn the pages. because books aren't a representation of reality, how an old man would speak. no, there's always a simplification. books are telling you a story about what an old man might do. yes, i think someone once said that the simplest real human being was 1,000 times more complex than the most complex

shakespearean character. that is true. real people are very, very complex, indeed, and all you can ever do with a novel is to try and focus a single facet and try and make them as real as possible. talking about storytelling, i'm interested in something about your mother, who, i think, was of irish descent and came from a tradition of the telling of tales, which is a very powerful bit of the culture. her grandfather was a seanchai, an irish storyteller, who used to go from fireside to fireside and be rewarded with a meal and a glass of ale if he tells a story. it was a community purpose, this business of storytelling. oh, yes, it kept history alive. before it was written down... when i went to mongolia, they talked about the fact that they knew they were the distant ancestors of the north american native american, because they had been there 15,000 years ago, and they had an oral tradition which went back much, much further than anything written down and that's where these stories come from. you were a teacher. if you were trying to explain

to children who are a bit leery about history, or indeed novels, but particularly history, why it is that it's fascinating by saying, you know, how do we explain this, what happened, how do we know? my mother always said that, for her, history was a series of stories about people, with dates. to me, that's the absolute heart of it. people are interested in people. we are fascinated by extraordinary moments of courage and betrayal and love and despair, and history is absolutely chock full of those, because it's the story of millions of different people. it's an absolute treasure trove and always has been. and in this case, whether it's darien, a fantasy, or whether it's dunstan, based on, you know, a real man and a real historical period, the point about storytelling and where it takes us is the same. yes, i mean, at the end of the day, its characters. i think kurt vonnegut says there's this guy, right,

and he's a pretty decent kind of guy and then something awful happens to him. that's the absolute essence of all fiction, whether its history or heroic fantasy. conn iggulden, now cf iggulden with darien, thank you very much. thank you. time for a look at the weather. it has been an odd day again today, not exactly what we would expect to happen. very warm with the sun was out. this was a picture taken by one of our weather watchers at stevenage in hertfordshire, but the rain was never too far away. a good day for spotting some rainbows. take a look at the radar picture from earlier on. this is the last few hours. we had these bands of heavy showers with some hail and thunder and also some thunderstorms around norwich right now. those will head out into the north sea and for many southern and eastern parts of england it may well become dry, but further north will hang on to showers. even some longer spells of rain and these could be heavy enough to give is the

risk of some thunder. enough cloud and breeze and it will be quite windy with wet weather in the north to prevent temperatures getting too low overnight. quite a bit of sunshine to begin with, actually, for england and wales in the morning. not too many showers. it will cloud over and we will get rain from the south—west. further north, the club will break up and we will get some sunshine but also showers into the afternoon. some of these could be heavy. temperatures in northern ireland and scotland about 17-18dc. a northern ireland and scotland about 17—18dc. a touch warmer for england, where the showers become pure. more sunshine. it will then cloud over across the rest of england and wales under the afternoon we will see some outbreaks of rain which should arrive in the london area. probably into the evening session for cricket at the oval. hopefully very few interruptions if any before then. if this ring develops across england and wales, it will turn heavy for a while. the winds pick up as well. keeping the showers going across western scotland and northern

ireland. europe we are close to this low pressure that will be ever present over the next few days. this weather front taking one area of rain away but still never too far away from southern part of england through the day. when sitting across the english channel, likely to come back at us again later on in the afternoon, but for a good chunk of the south it will be dry. light winds before backing to the mixture of sunshine and showers across scotla nd of sunshine and showers across scotland and northern ireland. temperatures peaking around 21—22dc. rain during the evening and early pa rt rain during the evening and early part of the night. showers return with a vengeance, initially in the west, developing more widely through the day. some of those heavy with some hail and thunder. very mixed weather over this weekend. rather call for the time of year. stronger winds from time to time. one when the sun is out and showers never too far away. hello, i'm ros atkins,

this is 0utside source. hello, i'm christian fraser, and this is 0utside source. is donald trump in danger of pushing the republican party too bar? —— too far. a top republican senator issued this warning to the president over his recent criticism of attorney generaljeff sessions. if of attorney generaljeff sessions. jeff sessions is f will ifjeff sessions is fired, there will be holy hail to pay. this could be the beginning of the end of the trump presidency. police investigating the grenfell tower fire say they have reasonable grounds to suspect corporate manslaughter offences may have been committed. israel has yielded to days of palestinian street protests by removing all additional security measures around the al—aqsa mosque. 64 years ago the fighting ended in the war between