the irishman. by the ninth round, mcgregor was in trouble, his energy sapped, he was clinging to the ropes for survival. the end soon followed for survival. the end soon followed for a fight that had in trade and repulsed many given the language and behaviour of both men in the build—up. behaviour of both men in the build-up. after 21 years in the sport of boxing, i had some great fights and some boring fights but at the end of the day, i will always be remembered asa the end of the day, i will always be remembered as a winner. somehow believe that this fight would be a forest but in the end it was far from it, but the controversies remain, so to the deep unease about a fight that was unapologetically put on, primarily for the money. a fight that was unapologetically put on, primarily for the moneym was an enjoyable experience and a great learning experience. i am happy with it. i would love the win. to sports great showman delivered entertainment, but with the cheques cashed and the hype at an end, the circus has now left town. there's been a gold for great britain after liam heath finished a canoe sprint grand slam.

at the world championships. heath won the k1 200 event in the czech republic, which means he now holds the olympic, world and european titles. that's all from sportsday. we'll have more on the bbc news channel throughout the evening. on the cover of sam bourne's latest thriller, to kill the president, it says this: "the unthinkable has happened. "the united states has elected a volatile demagogue as president." well, readers may suspect that they know what's coming, but of course, we don't know who he is. he has no name in the book. just that there's enough danger for some of those around him to have to face a troubling moral dilemma. well, sam bourne is the guardian columnist jonathan freedland. he has long since outed himself as the author. welcome.

some of your readers may find the setup in this novel eerily familiar. does that make it easier or harder to write? well, in some ways harder, because this is meant to be and is avowedly fiction. it's an alternative present. but of course the reader is going to have recent and current events in their mind. so you have to sort of ride that and use that to your advantage, and yet also insert things that will be wholly unfamiliar, so the heroine of the story, the character called maggie costello who has appeared in a couple of earlier sam bourne novels, irish—born, very idealistic, principled woman who worked for the previous president, who was this widely admired figure around the world, and now has held on, working for this much more unpopular president. so she is at the centre of it, she is a wholly fictional character.

but the universe around her, i'm aware that people are going to be bringing things to it that they know from the real world. well, you know perfectly well what they're going to bring to it. they're going to say this is donald trump. now, i mean, is it donald trump, or is it not donald trump? so, the president is never named. he's a fictional creation. and i think that's important, because you wouldn't be able to set all these other hares running. so, you know, for example, at the centre of the story are these two lieutenants to the president, loyal partisans for their party, who find themselves frankly appalled by the man they are serving, have come to the conclusion that he's a menace not only to america but to the world. and those people, the backgrounds they have, in this novel, they're the defence secretary, they're the chief of staff. they don't map onto the real defence secretary, the real chief of staff. so what you're doing is creating this alternative universe, this alternative world. but at the centre of it obviously are going to be things that people will find familiar. we don't want to give away the whole plot, and the central moral dilemma that unfolds as the story goes on. but you can set the scene for us at the beginning, i think, without spoiling it for anyone.

yes, so the book opens with the president launching a nuclear strike against north korea. remember i wrote this book many months ago, before any of the current events had happened, but that is a quirk of the timing. he launches a nuclear strike against north korea and china after a war of words with the north korean leader, and that is narrowly averted really by the ingenious intervention of quite a low—level person who narrowly averts that strike. it's a fascinating moment, because it gets us into the whole question of whether there's a machine that is irrevocable once it starts, or whether it can be stopped. one of the fascinating things of parts of the research i did for this book was about the nuclear authority of the president. it turns out it's the least checked power of all the powers and american president has. the right to, or the power, to launch a nuclear assault, one that could end civilisation and the human race, there's no restraint. there's no filter on him.

once he or she decides to do it, they simply have this aide, this quite low—level military aide who walks around with a briefcase manacled to the wrist which has the nuclear codes in it. he gets the codes from the aide, calls up a number in the pentagon war room, simply confirms his identity using those codes, and then he can give the order. the defence secretary is not there, the head of the army is not there, the chairman of the joint chiefs is not there. it's up to the president. he's a nuclear monarch with this power, and that is what sets this plot, this story, in motion. but what the plot then explores is whether the military mind and the political mind has the flexibility to say in those circumstances, we must do something. even if it is something morally as difficult and dangerous as the launching of a nuclear strike itself. well, that's right. at the heart of this book, i hope, are a series of these kind of moral dilemmas for the players involved. figures in the white house. the president himself is actually more or less offstage for most of this novel. it's about the people who serve him, and the dilemmas they wrestle with. and there's one right

at the very beginning, can you thwart a presidential order? what will it take? but from then on, the even larger dilemma, which confronts the two people who work for him, and which is discovered by our heroine, maggie costello, is that they begin to conclude that the man that they have taken an oath to serve is a menace to the world. and there they begin to wrestle with, where does your responsibility lie in that situation? as a good patriot, is it your duty to serve the commander—in—chief, or should you, if you really have concluded he's a danger to the world, seek to remove him? and of course they explore the legal avenues first. in a sense, we've been there before in the nixon presidency, because although what was at stake was simply the clinging on to power, it wasn't the possibility of a nuclear strike or anything like that, at least as far as we know. but there was a question raised among some of those around him as to whether his travails and horror of the position he was in had unbalanced him. and if it had, was there anything anyone could do about it?

well, it's absolutely right. and i'm glad you mention it, partly because the characters themselves refer to nixon and the so—called madman strategy. this is where he deputed his secretary of state, henry kissinger, to go round the world saying to world leaders, nixon's a bit crazy, you know. he's just crazy enough to do this. which nixon encouraged this strategy, because he believed it would make them fear him more, and therefore accommodate him with peace in vietnam and that kind of thing. but i'm particularly glad you mentioned nixon, partlyjust because it comes from that era of the early ‘70s where not only was nixon and watergate going on, but it spawned the conspiracy political thriller. and, you know, i had no role in this, but one thing i love about this book is the cover. and the cover is absolutely a ‘70s—era sort of cover design. it could be day of the jackal or three days of the condor, which were thrillers i grew up with and loved. and the nixon era really incubated an atmosphere where people were ready to believe that the president was somehow a danger, and therefore buy into those kinds of scenarios. some people will think either looking at this book,

just looking at the cover, or reading it, that this is a bit rich. you can't bear donald trump, so you've written a book portraying him, albeit through an unnamed president in these pages, as somebody who is about to blow up the world. and they say, come on, if you believe that, write it, put your name on it and answer questions, rather than suggesting that it can happen. how do you answer that? well, jonathan freedland is denouncing trump regularly in the column i write as a newspaper journalist, i'm sort of commentating on that. this was a different issue that i wanted to wrestle with, which was this question, the what if question. you know, i think all thriller writers will say, the two most useful words are what if. you take what's going on in the real world, and then you knock it on a stage, and you think, what if this then happened? and the what if for me was, what if you served somebody like that, and you yourself, not a hostile guardian journalist, but you yourself, a loyal member of the president's party who had sworn the oath to serve him, you yourself came to

the conclusion he was dangerous? that's what i wanted to explore, and i think, you know, the day of the jackal, and i've been very pleased a couple of critics have compared it to that, was about a named president in charles de gaulle. jeffrey archer wrote shall we tell the president?, in which teddy kennedy was imagined in an assassination scenario. so i think there is a kind of sub—genre that does this. but to me, the reality and this novel are separate. they may be separate, but the key to a novel like this, you mentioned day of the jackal, you mentioned three days of the condor, the key is that the reader has to believe that this is not fantasy, that it could come to this. if they don't believe that, they'd probably give up after five pages. yeah, i think there is something in that. and i think one of the things that's interesting getting the reader reaction so far, and it's not been very long, is this idea that this seems plausible, that the danger, the sort of stakes that are in their mind as a reader, are because they look at the real world, and they think, a scenario not the same as this, not identical to this, is plausible. and i think one of the things

that the big surprises that have confronted you and me as journalists this year is they've made all kinds of scenarios that would once have seemed fantastical now seem plausible. and therefore i think it makes readers able to regard a story like this as plausible, because the real world itself is throwing up fantastical things all the time. jonathan freedland, sam bourne, author of to kill the president, thank you very much. thank you. hello. it has been a fine sunday across much of the british isles. plenty of sunshine. our weather watcher pictures coming in. this is from cornwall. we have seen some cloud in parts of scotland, northern ireland has been rather cloudy and into parts of north—west england and

north west wales as well. for the rest of england and wales, warm sunshine. a fine evening, we will see some outbreaks of rain running from west to east, mostly northern scotland, the breezes fresh up here, bringing ploughed into northern ireland. light winds in england and wales, some mist and fog and temperatures lower in rural spots. but everyone keeps the fine weather for monday because there are whether france approaching from the atlantic. england and wales get the warm sunshine. for scotland and northern ireland, the rain will move southwards. not much rain in the east of scotland and as it clears it will brighten up again, in the evening, one or two showers in the north—west of scotland. in the afternoon, the rain clearing north—west scotland, a blustery day and outbreaks of rain not amounting to much, but quite wet for a time in glasgow, that rain will move into belfast as well. quite a bit of cloud

in the cloudy at times in the west of wales, whereas the east of wales and the rest of them will have long sunny spells and it will feel warmer than today. some parts of england could get to 29 degrees. that could be the warmest late bank holiday in august on record. this is monday evening, a little bit of back cloud and rain filters towards the north of england and wales, later in the evening we go. on tuesday, as that cloud and rain move south, it is still quite warm ahead of that, a breezy day for scotland and northern ireland. wednesday is a messy day, an area of low pressure moves through parts of england and wales but thursday into friday, high pressure is building back again from the south west, wednesday we could see some outbreaks of rain affecting mostly pa rt see some outbreaks of rain affecting mostly part of england and wales, something to work on the details. thursday to friday, sunny spells and one or two thursday to friday, sunny spells and

one oi’ two showers. this is bbc news. i'm julian worricker. the headlines at 8pm: two lorry drivers are charged with causing death by dangerous driving after 8 people were killed in the mi crash. beyond anything experienced — the assessment of the us national weather service as thousands of people are rescued from rising floodwaters in texas. a warning to stay away from east sussex beaches and to keep doors and windows closed after a suspected chemical leak led to 50 people reporting eye and throat irritation. a change in policy on brexit — labour says britain should stay in the single market and customs union for a period after the leaving the eu. victims of the grenfell tower fire are remembered in a minute ‘s silence at the notting hail festival. some