deals, yemen, behind—the—scenes deals, yemen, geopolitics. this kind of thing is very rare in saudi. but a very interesting, because something is happening there. they are trying to float theirjob all happening there. they are trying to float their job all companies happening there. they are trying to float theirjob all companies with some transparency, they have let women drive, which is a tiny incremental change in the saudi context, important. now this. a corruption crackdown. 11 princes and dozens of senior officials arrested, so dozens of senior officials arrested, so it's obviously not just going after the small fry, even princess, who we have heard about as investors in twitter, citigroup. prominent figures. people who may have thought they were well out of these kind of areas. the crown prince, the king ‘s son, does seem absolutely sort of determined, to change saudi arabia, and to change the corruption, he says no one involved in corruption will escape the are a minister or a prince and are plenty of princes in

saudi arabia. the airport was closed because they did not want these people they were trying to arrest to get in theirjets and shoot off.l flight get in theirjets and shoot off.l flight risk, literally. that is worth knowing, isn't it! thank you both. that's it for the papers this hour. thank you ruth and ben, you'll both be back at half 11 for another look at the stories making the news tomorrow. coming up next, it's meet the author. william boyd is as much at home with the short story as the novel. fragmentary glimpses of lives that gleam brightly, collisions of events that take you straight to the heart of things. the dreams of bethany mellmoth is a collection with a novella, surrounded by eight short stories. they have a loosely interlocking theme, and the characters and all aware of their past as they try to find the confidence to look ahead. disordered lives, meat and drink

to a writer like william boyd. you've published collections of short stories before and it strikes me that maybe you find writing a short story, when you're in the middle of a whacking great novel, some kind of release, a change of pace? it that true? yes, i think it is true, because i think different mental gears are engaged when you write a short story as opposed to a novel, and sometimes you get an idea which can't function as a novel but you think would make a perfect short story. the other thing is you can experiment in a short story, in a way you wouldn't do in a novel, because if it all goes terribly wrong, you haven't wasted a year of your life! like a bit of knitting that starts to unravel. so it's a very attractive other thing to do. it's a grand olf form with many

great practitioners. to participate, from time to time, is really interesting. you talk about what makes the perfect short story, what does make the perfect short story? well, it's very hard to define. i mean, i think there are seven types of short story. i constructed this taxonomy once, but i think the key one is the chekhovian model. anton chekhov at the end of the 19th century developed this, i suppose you'd call it a slice of life — it doesn't have a beginning, middle or end, itjust presents an episode or a character and it's often very open—ended. i think that now is the dominant type of short story. just a piece of a life presented to the reader. and you like that form. in the eight short stories and the novella, that make up this volume, and the novella has the title of the volume on it and it runs to about 100 pages, you're often concerned with random things. shance happenings and random recollections, one life that's seen backwards or two lives that are seen backwards in one story, that sort of make up a life, so fragments come together.

it's obviously an idea that you enjoy? yes, and i think in the short story you can fragment narrative, you can present, if you like, a series of shards and the reader makes the plot. there's something about the form's generosity, in that you can take a series of random incidents and because it's short, because it's very discreet, it sort of does the work itself. it brings it all together, in the way that a lyric poem might do. let's talk about the central story, which i suppose counts as a novella, 100 pages, and it's about a 24—year—old girl in contemporary london whose life is if not a mess, it's a life that's not really going anywhere. she's sort of floating, she doesn't know quite where the tide is going to take her. it's very much a story of our time, isn't it? yes...

probably another reason for writing short stories is you can do the here and now very well and very succinctly. i wander around london looking and i see young people and in a way construct short stories for them, and i'm aware of people drifting a lot nowadays, trying out differentjobs trying out different locations, moving, different ambitions, and so i sort of try to distil this contemporary phenomenon of drifting through life. there are some interlocking ideas in these stories, and the odd character who pops up in another story, but they're not really bolted together in any serious way. but this theme of fragments, sort of floating around and then in some magnetic way coming together, is one that pops up quite a lot, and the chance happening, the last story, a man whose name is mistaken for somebody else's and he ends up in a kind of romp across the highlands. it's an adventure story, but it's all because of a mistake. yes, i think you could say that luck

— good luck and bad luck — is a theme that runs through all these stories and probably runs through all my novels as well, it's something that obsesses me, the way that life can turn so quickly and that personal happiness can be fragmented so suddenly. i always feel inclined to point that out to people — don't take anything for granted, because it can all go horribly wrong very soon. the short story allows you to take these little moments and see where a narrative will turn or a life will turn like that. it's almost like a collection of lyric poetry, isn't it, a collection of individual poems? yes, i think it is. i take great care in the order in which they're set out in the book, just as a poet doesn't just throw the poems down. what thinking goes into that? some of it's very pragmatic. you might not want three first person singular stories together. other ideas are you want to set a tone of voice at the beginning of a collection, to say this is how i see the world and here a ten

other examples of it. so it kind of depends on the stories you have to hand. one of the great things about short story collections, of course, is you get this great cataract of characters. you know, there's somebody new coming along every 20 pages, whereas in a novel you have to deal with a gang that you create one way or another and then follow them through. here you can pick someone up, play with them for a bit and put them aside. the man whose life is defined, for example, in one of these short stories by the things he's stolen, largely from friends. many of them rather insignificant things, but none—the—less acts of theft. yes, that's an example of the experiments you can do in a short story. you can take this idea, can you define a life through the things that one person has stolen? well, let's have a go and see if we can. you wouldn't attempt a novel like that. no. and that's what i mean, different sets of mental gears are engaged when you're taking the short form or the long form. it's quite a different form of writing in a way.

and there two people in here who look at their lives in reverse. yes. which, again, is something you can pull off in a 30 page story. yes, exactly, and it doesn't become tedious, and the trope, the conception is actually quite intriguing because the view backwards is always clear and distinct, whereas ahead is a shimmering void of potential. and i think it's fair to say that in this volume that what you're reflecting or suggesting isn't a despair about the world, but quite a bit of wry amusement? yes, i think i am essentially a comic writer — a serious comic writer. do you? i do. i think i see the world as a kind of absurd comedy and so, inevitably as a writer constructing stories are telling stories and telling stories about characters, that point of view filters down and i always quote vladimir nabokov, one of my favourite writers, who said that a good laugh is the best pesticide. i think there's a lot to be said for that. yes, you are, of course, of scottish background.

the scottish literary tradition is filled who people who had a much darker conception of what the world did to people and the vengeance it wreaked on individuals' psychologies. yes, indeed. i assume, even though i was born in africa, my parents are scots, and my formation is entirely scottish. but there is a very strong, ironic, absurdist view of the world which is also very scottish, and very russian interestingly. very chekhovian — nothing makes much sense, so you might as get on with things. and after a long career as a writer, which continues, obviously you're writing as furiously, as seriously as ever. that hasn't cooled at all for you, has it? no. you still get the urge? absolutely. i think sometimes i can't believe my good luck, to be still writing,

still having my books published. my first novel was published 35 years ago, it shocks me to say. no, i never take it for granted. and, of course, again to quote chekhov, to be a free artist is possibly the best thing you can possibly be on this small planet. william boyd, author of the dreams of bethany mellmoth, thank you very much. pa rt part two of the weekend certainly a dry and right one for many of us. by few showers but noticeably colder. it will be a cold bonfire night for most but at least dry. overnight the temperatures falling away under the clear skies. you can see the blue hue. by dawn, temperatures in the countryside, —1, —2 for many but up to —6 for some along with some mist and fog. starting monday on a cold note across parts of england and wales. a change taking place across

the north and west as a weather front comes in with increasing cloud and rain and wind. some cloud by the afternoon will reach the south—west of england and parts of wales, some light rain and temperatures slowly lifting to 11 or 12. in the east, dry with sunny spells through the day but quite cold. north—west england into scotland and northern ireland, a lot of cloud by the afternoon, the rain piling up across the north and west of scotland. getting heavier and the wind stronger too. mild air will continue to push ahead of the rain as it slowly trundles east during monday night. a bit of snow over the high ground of scotland. temperatures, a much milder night compared to previously. turning colder across the far north—west. the mild air is very brief because more cold air

moving in behind that weather front. the weather front is on tuesday, which is very wet from any central and southern and eastern areas, quite windy. the rain clearing away, hanging around in the south—east but plenty of sunshine and scattered showers elsewhere. turning colder here, milder with the rain. the weather front eventually moves away. high pressure building on wednesday for the next weather front on thursday. quite a flip—flop week. wednesday looking dryad, brighter, cold, a frosty start. thursday, more cloud and a few showers. this is bbc news. i'm julian worricker. the headlines at 11:11: at least 20 people have been killed after a gunman opened fire at a baptist church in texas. the attack happened in the small town of sutherland springs, in wilson county, around 50 people were thought to be at the service at the time.

a huge new leak of financial documents — known as the paradise papers — has revealed how the powerful and wealthy secretly invest vast amounts of money in offshore tax havens. the bbc panorama programme has discovered that millions of pounds of the queen's private money is invested in offshore funds based in the cayman islands and bermuda by her private estate, the duchy of lancaster. cabinet minister, damian green, describes claims that police found pornography on his computer in 2008 as "political smears".