‘them mum: in: ‘them this week. this is for them this week. this is going for them this week. this is going for them this week. this is going for the young voter? it is all about the youth vote. they need to sort out the student loan system. the labour manifesto, there is some feeling that there could be cross— party feeling that there could be cross—party agreement on possibly raising the threshold at which loans become repayable. also the interest rate, 6.1%. this is compounded interest. interest starts to become charged on the loan right from the moment you start your studies. if you work with people who have got student debt, it troubles them. one of my young colleagues was unable to find out how much she owed. she was told she owed nothing, then that she owed 2000. then it was three and a

half thousand. it is not working, they need to sort it. just quickly, they need to sort it. just quickly, the observer. jeremy corbyn house to reunite a number of people in his party going forward. he says the observer is facing calls are cross the movement to commit to fall and permanent membership of the eu single market and the customs union. that is so that the labour party can offer a clear alternative to what is being offered by the tories and conservatives, and the government. thank you for taking us through the papers. you can see more you can see more of you can see more of the papers online. coming up next, it is meet the author. the english civil war, and a country governed by rivalry

and suspicion, by turmoil. in frances hardinge's novel a skinful of shadows we are led into that dark maze by a young girl who carries a special burden. spirits, ghosts, who have taken refuge inside her. this is historical fantasy on a grand scale. a child flees persecution. she gathers a crew of protectors, encounters a strangely interesting dead bear and deals with a fear that we can all too well imagine. well, let's start with that time in england in the 17th century, the civil war. because it's at the heart of the book, the turmoil.

you're obviously drawn to it. it obviously excites you. very much so. i'm always fascinated by historical time periods that are times of aftermath or transition or revolution, whether it's a little revolution like this particular time period or a revolution of the mind, a cultural shaking up of everything. and, basically, in the case of the civil war, it was all those things. a lot of people at the time felt that their entire world was falling apart. there's lots of people talking about the world turned upside down. and quite a few people who thought the world was actually ending. there's a lot of people who were preparing for the literal biblical end times. and into that world you insert this wonderful psychological drama, really, of ghosts that live in the heads of various people. particularly in this family. just set the scene for us, with a young girl who wants to get rid of a spirit which has lodged, escaping in her head. well, my pooryoung protagonist, i'm

not very nice to my protagonists... she's the illegitimate daughter of a certain, rather sinister aristocratic family. yes, not very nice. no. she's inherited a gift or possibly curse depending on your point of view, in that she has a space inside her in which ghosts can take refuge. and first get an inkling of this when ghosts start giving her terrible nightmares by trying to claw their way into her head. and because of this gift, the family has plans for her, but at the point where she is finally adopted by this family she has another ally of her own, another ghost who's not exactly human. it's a classic tale of a child in a sense trying to escape but also trying to find herself. you must have felt yourself very close to her when you were writing this story.

all my characters are partly me and in some respects not me. which is just as well, since a lot of my characters are murderers. it would be unpleasant if they were. absolutely. basically, if i was all my characters i probably shouldn't be allowed out. i do feel close to a lot of my protagonists, particularly those who are quiet and not exactly what they seem. i was a very shy little girl. you must have been a little girl with a very vivid imagination, though. this stuff doesn't just make itself up. i mean, you clearly were somebody who, i would guess, dreamed a lot of exotic adventures and places you hadn't seen, of strange characters. dead bears pop—up in this! a cast of characters that accompany her on her sort of guest for herself, that tells us something about your mind, i think, as a young person, doesn't it? yes.

i was already weird when i was young. and, yes, i was very much a daydreamer. it helped that i grew up surrounded by books. my parents actually met each other working in the same bookshop. so i was always surrounded by stories and very much encouraged. both of my parents read to us. i also had a rather wonderful younger sister. i still do have. but we played elaborate, imaginary games together. we built interconnected worlds and played out whole storylines. well, interconnected worlds is really what this book is about, isn't it? worlds living side by side. yes. obviously, the time of the civil war is a very divided time and people's perception of reality is wildly divided, in a way that is actually slightly more familiar these days than i necessarily thought it was going to be when i started writing the book. because you could say that we live in a world turned upside down right now. i think a lot of people are feeling it that way. and certainly when i was reading about the civil war, a lot of it was eerily familiar. i mean, even now you're getting

the sense of people perceiving the very same events very differently, depending on which news channel they watch. fake news. absolutely. and back in those times it would be which tracts you read, which church you went to, which minister you were listening to. well, indeed. and whether you're attending an illegal mass where the priest went back into the priest's hole into the mansion house where he could hide. and the suspicion, like all societies that are gripped by some political passion, whether it is a totalitarian society or one with religious persecution, it's a very dangerous place to be because you don't know whom you can trust. absolutely. the world does split in surprisingly deep chasms and weird zigzags when something like that happens. sometimes you'll get entire families that are sliced neatly in half.

the protagonist in this book is in a position where she is going to be able to shape her own world. there's so much chaos, so much confusion, and we've got the whole business of ghosts and everything, not quite sure how to cope with that. she's going to be making her own place. it's a very powerful idea, isn't it? in fiction. yes. it's partly a quality of the heroine herself. as you say. also partly a quality of the times. on the one hand you have this chaos which is impacting a lot of people and damaging their lives and triggering off thousands of individual tragedies, many of which are never going to be recorded. but at the same time, there are also openings, the overturning of the usual rules means that there is scope for people who would usually be trapped within a particular station, within a particular set of expectations, to branch out. so, if you are, as you described yourself, slightly weird as a youngster, with powerful urges and so on, it's quite a good time to be around, isn't it? it's a difficult time,

the dangerous time, but a time full of possibilities. and you actually notice that if you look at the civil war in terms of opportunities that were grabbed by women. and that's what fiction does, it opens up possibilities of different things happening, and the reason we're interested in a good story, especially with a young, innocent girl, relatively speaking, is that we don't know which road in the end she's going to take or which road she will be doomed to take. yes. and i try not to flag up the direction my plot‘s going. i'm quite cruel to my readers. i quite enjoy misdirection. one of my favourite directors when i was younger was hitchcock. i love what he does with suspense and what he does with misdirection. and when you get to the end of a story like this, which is wonderfully energetic, full of verve and colour.

thank you. and surprises and so on. when it's over, are you sad? i tend to have quite a rocky relationship with my books. and my usual pattern, i'm afraid, is that about two thirds of the way through the book i fall catastrophically out of love with it. how do you get back into love with it? i usually don't until it's published. and then? if i can see some signs that some people unrelated to me or my publishing company, not personal friends, anything like that, show some signs of actually liking it, particularly if it's a child. that's enough. then, it'sjustified its existence. frances hardinge, author of a skinful of shadows, thank you very much. hello. good evening too. as it went

through the afternoon on saturday, there were two types of weather. a bit of cloud around for northern ireland in scotland and northern england. —— good evening to you. but elsewhere we had glorious are now in —— sunshine. northern scotland did pretty well. whether such and came out, it made all the difference to day felt. temperatures across the board day felt. temperatures across the boa rd pretty day felt. temperatures across the board pretty much above average. notably for the north of scotland, we saw highs of about six celsius above average in the moray firth. for the next 2a hours, we have is what a front that is going to be trying to push across the uk. as it does so, it bumps into high—pressure cross—canada navy does so, it bumps into high—pressure cross—ca nada navy and does so, it bumps into high—pressure cross—canada navy and europe. —— scandinavia and europe. at the moment, we have wet weather in northern ireland. it is then to move into scotland overnight. a few spots

are in court in wales and southwestern england. not grey amounts. fine for the rest of central and eastern england. it could be a glorious southern rise because of the cloud to the west. so we could get some nice sunrise pictures in the morning. the rain will be patchy and will try to move in further across wales, england, in scotland, but for most, a warm day. warmer. temperatures could get to 22 oi’ warmer. temperatures could get to 22 or 23 celsius. during the night time, temperatures could pick up a little. the winds will move eastwards and then become stationary. temperatures will go down through sunday night and it will turn quite foggy by the time we get to me that morning. some fog patches could be damp and slow to clear on monday boarding. so a grotty commute is possible for northern ireland. the fog clearing and the afternoon looking dry. the weather front has weakened again as

it changes direction and moves westwards. wales and west scotland will have the lion's share of the cloud. pies between 16 and 19 degrees, still, pretty good for this time of year. looking at the next few days, a bit of cloud around, but a bit of sunshine. as we had to thursday, there will be a more potent than the rain crossing the uk. for many of us, not much rain in the next few days, but we will see something a little wetter by the time we get to thursday. that is the latest weather. goodbye for now. this is bbc news. i'm alpa patel. our top stories: north korea's foreign minister launches a blistering attack on president trump at the united nations. he tried to insult the supreme divinity of my country by referring

it to divinity of my country by referring ittoa divinity of my country by referring it to a rocket. by doing so, however, he committed an irreversible mistake. it comes as iran test—fires a new medium—range missile, days after a warning from the united states. rescuers in mexico are forced to suspend their search effort temporarily after the country is hit by another earthquake. also in the programme, the prince and the first lady. harry meets melania, ahead of the invictus games in canada.