well, it is because such regularity. well, it is because of money, and it is about package holidays rather than flying. package holidays rather than flying. package holidays in the accounts about 5% of monarch osmo trade, but they need to have enough money in the bank in order to operate. as you rightly say, last year they needed a 12 day extension and they needed a great injection of money so they could keep trading. i mean, people will be protected by atoll and is abda and all that. those protections are not total, there are lots of things you can lose apart from just losing your holiday. absolutely, and the inconvenience and the worry and all that. i am reading that it has been granted a twitter for our extension to its licence to sell package holidays so that people will be protected for their trips, but the last—ditch talks are still there to try to get them out of a longer term prop. but then eventually that deadline will expire and we are back to square one again. with both ryanairand to square one again. with both rya nair and atoll to square one again. with both ryanair and atoll —— monarch, you're better to by bus, really. that is what ryanair

better to by bus, really. that is what rya nair is better to by bus, really. that is what ryanair is hoping to do. perhaps they could take over the railways. there is a thought. i will never get to manchester for the tory co nfe re nce never get to manchester for the tory conference for like that. well, that is the papers for tonight. thank you z ;;::5 coming next, z for coming in. coming up next, meet the author. siri hustvedt is a prize—winning american novelist who also writes about art and philosophy, and lectures in psychiatry. so it's not surprising that in her book of essays, a woman looking at men looking at women, her mind races back and forth from the visual arts to sex, to the science of the mind, and of course to the question of how we see ourselves. welcome. siri, you begin this book

in your introduction to the essays by recalling cp snow and his famous description of two cultures — a scientific culture and an artistic culture, literary culture, which couldn't talk to each other in the ‘505. and you seem to be suggesting that we still haven't got over that. yes, i think that that very famous lecture that caused a great deal of controversy is something that most americans and people in the uk remember, so i wanted to begin by asking that question — have we come much further? i think the gulf continues to exist. i think what's changed is that science certainly has taken pre—eminence over what snow called literary intellectuals. literary intellectuals don't have the same clout as they may have had in the 19505. one of the things he was lamenting

at that time wasn't so much scientists' ignorance of shakespeare, but the other way round. if you said to, you know, a great literary scholar, "what's the second law of thermodynamics? they wouldn't know. that's right, and i think snow has a point. becoming literate or reasonably literate in both the arts and the sciences is extremely useful. well you are... you talk about art, you talk about how we deal with visual images. many of these essays reminded me of people likejohn berger, for example, writing in ways of seeing, which was almost a revolutionary book. he was writing from a marxist perspective but it was all about how we look at things, which most of us are often not conscious of. yes, i think the way we frame questions in the culture is vital,

and i think we need multiple frames. so, if you are literate in both the sciences and the humanities, you have access to a number of different perspectives and that allows you to dance, as i call it, among those perspectives and solve problems in the particular discipline that you are working in. that's the crucial point. you are... not uniquely but you are splendidly placed to do this because you are a novelist, a very successful novelist, you love the visual arts but you also, as we speak you are on your way to deliver a paper at a neurology conference. you are making a case for the importance of thinking, of looking at an image and trying to work it out, of looking at ourselves and peeling away the layers of superstition or falsehood in getting to the real thing. are you concerned about the kind of culture we now have?

well, i think we have to be aware that our perception of anything includes bias so there is some agreement now that generally we see what we expect to see, that perception is not passive. we are notjust taking in the real world, but we are actively creating it through our expectations. and imprinting our thoughts and beliefs... yes, and that would mean that perception is, by definition, conservative. so we bring our biases to our perception of things. one way, say in a work of art, to get past that to some degree i think is to spend a very long time in front of say a single canvas or work of art, and then time begins to play. you write about this, you know, very tellingly and almost with a sense of tension about how long you should spend, you know, looking at a great picture.

if it's a picture that will take that attention. yes. and what you get from it over time. say, if you care about an image, if you care about the work of art, two hours will give you a lot, i think, and it will change your ideas about the picture. rather than racing around the gallery and saying how many have i seen. yes, there's a pursuit of greatness, right? and greatness will influence how we look at an image. we've had that, er, attributions are changed so a painting that was attributed to rembrandt is then discovered not to be a rembrandt, and what happens — the museum either puts it in the basement or moves it and the spectators' experience with the painting will be changed by the attribution. we all know this is true. one of the things that i think is difficult to avoid is that

you have been writing these essays in an age, particularly in the united states, but not only in america, where there has been almost a deliberate attempt to say, you know, cultural complexity really doesn't matter. we shouldn't care about this stuff. and of course, with respect to the sciences, where there has been an attempt by some people to say, well, why do you believe these guys in white coats? exactly. for somebody who's going about this kind of thinking, that's a pretty depressing atmosphere. it is, so we live in sound bite worlds, everyone knows that, but also the anti—science movement, you could almost call it. people who say, well, i simply don't believe it, i don't believe climate change. so what is science? science moves and changes and discovers new things

all the time, so it's not a static reality. at the same time, there is a consensus about what is true or more true. that's what a scientific finding is. that could change over time, but to deny that scientific consensus is extremely dangerous to my mind. but it's equally important to go back to where we began, in your view, that we take artistic sensibility and thought just as seriously, so the way we apply our own minds to beauty and truth. that's right, so every discipline has its strengths and handicaps. i think that's important to understand. so scientists are not always philosophically sophisticated about what they are doing. sometimes the work rests on paradigms that they have not interrogated. philosophers can help that, philosophers can help understand how the scientific consensus is arrived at.

or, for example, historical changes. historians, i think, are invaluable in showing why some scientific ideas are accepted at a particular moment and others are discarded. we need all of these points of view to think carefully and subtly about who we are, what we are, and how we become what we are. in a sense, what you are arguing for is the release of what was called in a famous book, you know, a long time ago, the liberal imagination. not in a political sense but innocence of, you know, applying minds to problems in an open way. yes. i actually gave a lecture at massachusetts general hospital in january, and it was a grand rounds lecture but i got the extra bonus of being taken into research facilities. and they presented — these young scientists

presented their research to me, and at the end we began to talk about multidisciplinary approaches. and i said to them what i deeply believe — i am not telling you to read philosophy and literature and look at visual art because i think we should all be well rounded, lovely people. i'm telling you this because i think it will help you solve problems in your own work. i believe that. siri hustvedt, author of the essays in a woman looking at men looking at women. thank you very much. oh, thank you having me. hello again. hello again. as hello again. as we hello again. as we move hello again. as we move into hello again. as we move into october, we will continue to see our weather coming in from the atlantic. typical autumn weather. some sunshine, often wet and windy. the next dose of that whether arriving

in the coming days. drizzle across england and wales. —— weather. scotland hanging onto clearer skies. quite cold, temperatures have fallen sharply. across much of england and wales, quite different, mudgee, cloudy and drizzly at times. possibly a glimmer of sunshine. the cloud moving across northern ireland, taking the rain away. some heavy rain in western scotland. the best of the sunshine in the afternoon across northern ireland. despite all the cloud and brisk wind, feeling quite mudgee across england and wales. rain pushing away after dark in eastern england, seeing warmer, mudgee mayor being replaced by something a bit

cooler. watch this area of low pressure. we got all excited about the hurricane, it will not affect our shores that much. ringing within some strong winds by monday morning rush—hour. 50 mph across the trans— pennine is, perhaps up to 60 degrees in northern ireland. it could bring some travel disruption. frequent and heavy showers in the morning. it could be dry, wind is not as strong. temperatures a bit lower, given the strength of the wind, feeling a bit on the chilly side. this rain is all thatis on the chilly side. this rain is all that is left of hurricane maria. grazing southern england and through the channel. gone by tuesday. the one constant is the north—westerly wind which keeps going on tuesday. not feeling quite as cold in the wind, only looking at temperatures of13— wind, only looking at temperatures of 13- 14. wind, only looking at temperatures of 13— 1a. many places will have dry

day. it looks like it is not really going to build. getting squashed by low pressure coming in from the atlantic. keeping the run of wet and windy weather going. this is bbc news. our top stories: the catalan government insists sunday's vote on independence will go ahead. supporters of the vote hold events at polling stations in a bid to make sure they remain open. it will be a great loss for spain and for the people of spain, for democracy and for freedom of speech if we do not vote tomorrow. not only for catalonia but for the whole country. the situation in puerto rico following two devastating hurricanes remains dire, amid a deepening political row over the us relief efforts.

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