is best ways we can do that is preventing radicalisation generally is to look at society as a whole and to look at what it is that makes society less resilient to these ideas and in order to do that we need to think about the ways in which young people are educated, the way they're given skills to challenge propaganda when they see it, that means challenging you, challenging me, it means having difficult conversations with teachers about things. those are some of the key ways we can do that, instigating critical thinking. the other thing to bear in mind is that radicalisation is notjust about belief, it is about belonging and behaviours. so rather than always asking why does someone join, perhaps we also need to ask mundane questions about how theyjoin. so that sense of belonging, being part ofa group, that sense of belonging, being part of a group, finding friends who recruit them into this, and having that sense of belonging. i think that sense of belonging. i think thatis that sense of belonging. i think that is something that we really need to address more coherently than we currently are. good to talk to you, thank you. high winds are again fanning wild

fires that are now known to have killed at least 26 people in northern california. almost 300 people are reported missing but police say that that may be due to the chaotic nature of the evacuation programme. thousands have been left homeless by the 22 huge blazes which are spreading quickly and unpredictably. cbs correspondent greg mills gave us this update from santa rosa in northern california. the firefighters are kind of frustrated, this is day four and they haven't made much progress. i can report some good news, they have some containment of the largest of the 20 something fires but containment meaning where they've stopped is one terse, 2%, kind of negligent so they've a lot of work to do. the wind doesn't help, it's kicking up as the day warms up, it kicks in and makes it really difficult. the air is so bad across northern california that a lot of

schools are closed and they've cancelled or postponed a lot of sporting events, all around northern california just because of the bad air. they don't want people exercising in it. our air. they don't want people exercising in it. 0urfootball, american football, practice was cut short yesterday because of bad air. 3500 buildings are down and most of them are homes. around here, you can go blocks and blocks and blocks and miles and not see any houses standing. this is just miles and not see any houses standing. this isjust one miles and not see any houses standing. this is just one area, sa nta standing. this is just one area, santa rosa which was wiped out when the fire storm started on sunday night. but this fire is moving haphazard up here. and a number of towns and communities are still under evacuation orders. it's close to 20,000 people, one entire town, about 16 miles from here, has been shut down. everybody pushed out, one person was near the town, looked at it and person was near the town, looked at itand said person was near the town, looked at it and said it's a ghost town today. 5,000 residents, all gone because

they've been evacuated. 0ur motel in napa yesterday, we were told yesterday this part is under an evacuation order, we have to shut down. so a parking lot was pretty much empty and we had to find other accommodation last night. it's really difficult here for pretty much everybody but they're being patient because they want to see this thing come to an end. sadly, firefighters feel they're this thing come to an end. sadly, firefighters feel they‘ re making this thing come to an end. sadly, firefighters feel they're making two steps forward and then maybe three steps forward and then maybe three steps back, just because of that wind. they can't really get a handle on this fire. greg mills of cbs there. the headlines on bbc news. the eu warns of deadlock after latest round of brexit talks as the two sides still fail to agree on the uk's divorce bill. police in new york and london are investigating after a string of sexual assault allegations against hollywood producer harvey weinstein, who denies the accusations. sally annejones, the british woman recruited by so—called islamic state in syria is reported to have been killed in a drone strike. now it's time for meet the author.

the late victorian and edwardian age was the apogee of empire and it's often been painted as a time of plenty for the british. yet it was also politically tumultuous and anxious, a time of change and decay, as well as progress. and simon heffer, in his sweeping history of the three decades before the first world war, calls it "the age of decadence". welcome. it was a time of trouble, and yet perhaps because of what followed, we tend to think of it as a golden age. why do you think that is?

well, i think many of us have grown up with the forsyte saga and downton abbey on television, which does seem to suggest that certainly if you had money it was a great time, but it wasn't such a good time for everybody else. you mustn't forget, everybody else was 90% of the population. we had a growing middle class, but there was still a working class, whose wages flatlined in the ten or so years before the war. you must remember old—age pensions were only introduced in 1909, five shillings a week for those over 70. most people, i think the average male death was at a8, so very few people lived to claim it. if you did live to 70 before 1909, and you were clapped—out and couldn't work, you went to the workhouse. so it was a harsh society, but it was also a society in which there were people with real issues, who wanted to take them to a liberal government elected in 1906 in the hope that they, unlike the tories before them, would sort them out — and these are notably women, who want the vote, the irish, who want home—rule, and the working class, who want more money.

let's talk about a couple of things you mentioned there. what strikes me is that people who know you as a newspaper columnist, as a solid man of the right, might be surprised to find you in this book being extraordinarily sympathetic to the irish home rule pressure, and very much a gladstone man rather than a salisbury man. salisbury dominated the 1890s as a conservative prime minister. just what is it about gladstone that you found so admirable on the irish question? i think gladstone was a man of complete integrity, who understood that the irish were, like many in england, educated people, who were entirely capable of running their own affairs, and in 1869, when he had just become prime minister for the first time, he famously said, my mission is to pacify ireland. he couldn't do it in his first administration, but when he was re—elected in 1880, he was determined to do it and of course the fenian brotherhood at this time, the progenitors

of sinn fein, are causing an enormous amount of trouble. they are having terrorist attacks on the mainland, they killed the chief secretary to ireland, lord frederick cavendish in 1882 in phoenix park, and the chief civil servant of ireland, and he realises that you can't tell people who are capable of expressing their wish for the country that they can't have it. and the political failure to move on ireland in that period is one that's haunted british history ever since. it was catastrophic, and he tried another home rule bill in 1893, which failed, and eventually asquith brought one in. he had to bring one in in 1912, because he needed the support of irish mps to keep his majority in the house of commons, but it was incredible how slow we were to learn, notjust that the irish were capable of governing themselves, but that there would be terrible consequences — as you say,

a century really of unpleasa ntness and dissent, between two people who should really get on very well with each other. well, of course, the picture of this period is so fascinating because of course you had at that time a monarch, queen victoria, until the beginning of the century, who was intensely political. her hatred of gladstone, which emerges through the story, is quite extraordinary, and something i think that people still — although it is so well—known — people find remarkable, given what happens in our own age. well, she famously said of gladstone, he addresses me as though i were a public meeting. and gladstone was a man who i think found it at times difficult to deal with people who were not on his intellectual planet — which was most people. but when you couple that with deference to a monarch, i think he did find it difficult, but he was unbelievably reasonable to the queen, who was vile to him in return, and he never really complains about this until 1894, when he ceases to be prime minister for the last time, and he writes a memorandum in which he says,

i'm really quite hurt by the way she didn't even thank me after over 60 years of public service when i went for my final audience. that brings us to the question of empire, because at the time of the diamond jubilee, in ‘97, the british empire really was at its peak. this was the great moment. and then, within a few years there was the boer war and gladstone, who had never really been a man of empire, was really proved right in the way he almost can see the beginning of the end. yes. i mean, gladstone saw empire much as the romans saw their empire, which was that you only added a bit to it in the interests of defence. you didn't do it for reasons of exploitation or expansion. and he didn't really understand why people wanted to have a scramble for africa. of course, people like cecil rhodes and joe chamberlain, who was the colonial secretary back in london, were very keen to get their hands on places like the orange free state and the transvaal in particular, that had huge gold and diamond reserves and they used the excuse

of british settlers in those boer republics being ill—treated, being denied civil rights, to start the boer war. and it was believed that because these were a bunch of rough dutch farmers, armed with carbines, that the british army would flatten them in no time at all. why they thought that, i don't know, because it was only less than 20 years earlier that we've lost the first boer war and there has been enormous problems with — we remember rorke's drift and all those other things in south africa, where the native armies had been incredibly difficult to beat. and people went to recruiting stations in britain in1899, 1900, to join the british army, and in large numbers were rejected because they were unfit. they were malnourished, they did no physical education in schools, and they were totally unsuitable for being in an army. so in a strange way that war was a window into the heart of the nation at that time. it tells us so much.

yes, it does. it took us nearly three years to beat the boers and after it there was this huge enquiry, led by lord esher, into what was wrong with the army, but also enquiries into what was wrong with our people. but the fact it took nearly three years rather than the three months to beat these boerfarmers made a lot of people in this country think, well, what happens if we had a much more severe challenge? we started to realise that despite the esher reforms, despite reforms in the education system that made young men in particular do physical education, we were still going to have a real job providing a proper army if war broke out. aside from the rough politics and fascinating politics of the time in peace and war, and the great figures like gladstone and salisbury, you write this book about the kind of society that people knew. its literature, its architecture, its art, and also inevitably its monarchy, and edward vii emerges as a scandal ridden, louche, as a scandal—ridden, louche, really rather extraordinary, and not very admirable individual.

it was really remarkable how they pulled it back after that period, wasn't it? edward vii became a very popular king. he was a man who was detested by his mother. she wouldn't even let him see state papers until he was in his 50s. he was called in the famous tranby croft libel case, where he was revealed to have not just played but instigated an illegal card game. and of course he had a string of mistresses, so edward vii had an awful lot of baggage around him, but when he became king he became enormously popular, because unlike his mother he was out there, he made many public appearances and people felt that they were familiar with him. where do you think in the end this period sits in our island story? i think that this will fit in our time, in our history, as a time of enormous change that prepared us as it were for the modern world, and if we hadn't had a war in 1914

i'm pretty certain there would have been massive civil unrest in this country, to try and broker that sort of new social settlement, that in fact it took two world wars to bring, in which the working class and women were properly enfranchised. that would have happened anyway, but this is the prelude to it. although the ruling class may have been rather oblivious to the fact they were going towards the precipice, i think the working class always understood there was going to be a reckoning. it's just that the reckoning came in a very different way from the way they were expecting. simon heffer author of the age of decadence, thank you very much. thank you. good evening. although it's been a dry day for most of us the cloud is increasing, this is how it looked an hour or two ago up in highland scotland. that's because we have

some weather fronts approaching. this looks as if it will bring persistent rain and especially to the north—west of the uk. rather damp night, windy across scotland and northern ireland. we will see that drizzly rain rolling on to the hills of north—west england and wales. as we approach friday we have a warning out for the cumbrian fells in particular where it's been so wet of late, particularly yesterday. milder tonight for most of us but still quite dry and bright across southern and eastern areas but on the whole more cloud around on friday. we will see the cloud clearing and the sun returning to the north of scotland and later in the north of scotland and later in the afternoon into northern ireland as well. quite wet for cumbria and north wales. that weather fronts wea ke ns into north wales. that weather fronts weakens into saturday morning, there will be a lot of cloud and the rain pushes back northwards again. and to the south of it as the sun comes out it's quite warm. hello, i'm ros atkins, this is 0utside source,

police in the uk and us are investigating sexual assault claims against harvey weinstein. this man is at the top of a very particular iceberg. i do think you can describe him asa iceberg. i do think you can describe him as a sex addict, he's a predator. this north american couple have been released by the afghan taliban and after being held for five years. donald trump spoke after the news. pakistani governments corporation —— is a sign that it is honouring the american wish that it do more to provide security in the region. donald trump is also threatening to pull back relief