‘ want to want to be refused any more they want to be refused any more where this time they get tokyo. they will be used to the crowd and the environment. hopefully we will see those guys turn into body and swims in its years. we have been talking about adam peaty throughout, have reportedly few else stood out? bash macs who else stood out? those events are more wide open. brecel will be the new face of world swimming on the world sprints. duncan scott, i always loved watching him. he has a little bit ago. he will get a bit more speed. ben proud, winning the 55. you are just saying everyone! seeing ben proud on the 53 as well, that is my

event and my heart goes out to him. and max litchfield getting that fourth place tonight, so devastating but a commonwealth record holder so fantastic swim britain. with the girls, siobhan o'connor took a big break girls, siobhan o'connor took a big brea k after girls, siobhan o'connor took a big break after rio. she will be back on for next year. and jazz carlin decided not to swim at this meet as well. but then people like freya anderson he were 16, going into the world juniors. we have some exciting prospect coming through, as well as some veterans back on fine form, fighting fit for next year. so much to look forward to. thank you. finally norway's alexander kristoff has won the world's richest one day cycle race, the ride london to surrey classic. after 116 miles of racing over a route based on the 2012 olympic road race, from london into surrey and back it came down to a bunch sprint on the mall and kristoff held off a late charge from denmark's magnus cort nielsen in second. that's all from sportsday.

we'll have more sport throughout the evening, but next on bbc news, it's meet the author. 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 too stop in the middle of a see them 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 is 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, 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 you're 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, is 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 1a 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. and you've told the story yes. and you've told the story 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 is 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've been 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. it has been the classic mixed bag

today. the weather can't make up its mind. sun xiang and downpours and that's likely to continue for the next 2a hours at least. —— sunshine. that's fine around as well. the further east and south you are, the best of the weather will be today. here is a satellite image. you can see the patterns and cloud formations, the clusters of showers racing across the country. the closer you had to develop pressure in the north and west, the more frequent and heavy showers will be. some of them real downpours with thunder and lightning, hail and faces being affected by the downpours because of the rain we had last night as well. around surrey and essex, this is a snapshot around 6pm. here it may stay dry through the day. the weather is looking beautiful with those clear, blue

skies. the showers in many areas will continue past sunset. lots of clear spells developing across these southern and central areas. in the north, where the clearest tells her, temperatures in rural spots could be as low as 5 degrees. these are the city temperatures we often show you. 0n city temperatures we often show you. on monday the low pressure is still with us. that means the overall weather pattern is not going to change. the closer you are to the centre, the more frequent and heavy the showers will be. scotland, northern ireland, northern england getting a good dose of showers. where is the south is dry and bright and bit warmer. in the norwich as well. on tuesday, we have showers still continuing. showers across northern and western areas but a drier and brighter day again in the far south—east country. on wednesday, a low pressure approaching. that is the more substantial area of bigger cloud and outbreaks of rain. that's going to

reach the southwest, wales and eventually northern ireland during the afternoon. through the afternoon, we think that rain will be reaching northern areas. this is early in the day, some brightness and dry weather across eastern areas. this is asil ‘s pattern will continue into the end of the week. thisjet continue into the end of the week. this jet stream racing continue into the end of the week. thisjet stream racing in our direction. this is bbc news. the headlines at 8pm... president trump says china isn't doing enough to halt the weapons programme of its ally, north korea. police in australia believe an alleged plot to blow up a plane was inspired by islamist extremism — four arrests have been made. international trade secretary liam fox says free movement of labour after brexit would not be keeping faith with the eu referendum result. also in the next hour — the duke and duchess of cambridge visit belgium to commemorate one of the bloodiest battles of world war one. the duke of cambridge and the king

of belgium and other dignitaries laid wreaths at the menin gate in ypres in remembrance of those who lost their lives in one of the bloodiest battles in human history.