have consequences of them. i think it is almost your body kind of decompressing in a way and getting used to not... so you get a fewer aches and pains. hopefully, that will pass because it has still only been a couple of months since i finished. so hopefully, that will pass. yeah, it's better but i am not going to lie, to be honest, it is still sore. i'm sure you want to have kids at some point with your partner, do you ever think it is going to be tough playing rugby? not really, the difference now is because when i was playing, i couldn't do anything else outside of rugby because i had to train the next day. if i went and kicked a ball about in the afternoon or whatever and i was sore, it meant i could not train the next day, whereas now i do not have that added element. if i go and kick a ball around or do whatever and i am sore, i'm just sore, it doesn't matter, it is not going to impact anything, ijust deal with being sore. in terms of that, i'm not going to let

it stop me from doing anything. it's not been a bad birthday week for englishman tyrrell hatton. after successfully defending his dunhill links championship title last weekend, he's gone and snatched a one—shot victory at the italian open, ending with a superb final round of 65. winning the two tournaments in a week have earned him around one and a half millions pounds. that's all from sportsday. there'll be more sport here on bbc news throughout the evening. now on the bbc news channel, 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. we 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 flat—lined 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 — 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 18905 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 enormous amounts 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 —— sovereignty 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 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 inquiry, led by lord esher, into what was wrong with the army, but also inquiries 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, 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, and the relative on

sunday... things set to get livelier in parts of uk on monday and the met office has issued an amber be prepared warning for strong winds, potentially disruptive across parts of northern ireland in the second part of the day. all of course due to what is currently hurricane 0phelia, still way to the south, but notice a stream of cloud into the northern half of the country, producing rain in parts of northern ireland, southern scotland and it turns wet here overnight and the rain pushes north. away from that, it is dry, with strengthening winds. so no longer a hurricane, but still a significant storm putting in the southern parts of ireland. all around these areas, the winds strengthened.

rain in scotland, but winds strengthening, 70 mph in west cornwall and 70—80 around the irish sea. monday afternoon into the monday evening rush hour, the strongest winds around the irish sea coasts. 70, potentially 80 mph and big disruption to ferry services and damage potentially. the rest of the uk completely different. the winds from the east of scotland, chilly with outbreaks of rain. blustery for england and wales, but nothing significant away from the western coasts and temperatures could hit the low to mid 20s. gusty winds in the evening rush—hour. monday, particularly from the afternoon, through monday night, into tuesday morning, disruption possible and even damage as well. on tuesday, the winds gradually ease, it stays wet.

in london and wales, largely dry with sunny spells before splashes of rain in the south later. nowhere near as warm as monday afternoon across england and wales, but pleasant enough in the sunshine. 0vernight rain from the south works into northern england on wednesday cooler here, a bit warmer further south. goodbye for now. this is bbc news. the headlines at 8pm: the bbc understands a third woman has come forward accusing harvey weinstein of rape. british actress lysette anthony says he attacked her in her home in the 1980s. a warning of steep rises in food prices if we leave the eu without a trade deal, ministers insist the uk will succeed "come what may". the car maker vauxhall says 400 jobs are to go at their plant at ellesmere port in cheshire by the end of the year. patients in england who go to see their doctor or attend

a hospital appointment may be asked to declare their sexual orientation. also in the next hour: hurricane 0phelia heads to ireland. troops are mobilised and schools closed in the south as they prepare to be battered by gusts of up to 80 miles per hour. and we'll have a round up of sport at half past including newcastle's draw against southampton.