t w ”x.“ it; 2 ll‘fli‘ll t w "c it; 13 ll'flflll “a the little similarity is that they said they would shake things up. in duterte‘s case, it led to lots of extrajudicial murders. the international community condemned him for that, donald trump goes and rinse with him, he doesn't drink, so i don't know what is in that class. nobody else would be photographed with this man, no otherworldly that. but it is part of a trip in which the president of the united states says he believes the president of russia, a former kgb agent, more than the entirety of his intelligence and security apparatus. we sometimes think he is a bit of a buffoon, this shows you the really worrying side of his policies. the coarsening of america's reputation. shall we finish with the metro? rita ora, ina shall we finish with the metro? rita ora, in a bathrobe with a towel on her head? i'm sorry, is this what we are meant to be wearing? you have missed the narrative. this is post

fashion fashion. this is a deconstruction of the preparations involve one a—lister diva to get on the red carpet. multiple costume changes? i have rarely seen anybody looking quite so good in a bathrobe. you should see me in the morning! i am concerned what she was doing at the european medicines agency. we will get some clarification. we all need a narrative when we get trashed. it is not enough, you have seen some of the things that come to the fore at the gala, this isjust an extension of that. it is high fashion. very low maintenance. very white whites. i don't know which washing powder she uses, but highly recommended. i don't pretend to understand. we will stop. that is it

for the papers tonight. on the bbc news website, you can read a detailed review of the paper seven days a week. we are there as well, each night's edition is posted shortly after we finish and it is on iplayer. thank you to tony and caroline. look at that lovely shot. we are back at 11.30. now meet the author. an old man with great power — he runs a media empire — sees his influence crumbling away. he's losing his grip, his family, perhaps even his sanity. what becomes of him? edward st aubyn‘s novel, dunbar, is a retelling of the story of king lear, as a contemporary novel. funny and melancholy by turns, the author of the celebrated series of novels about patrick melrose, is back on his favourite territory, dealing with a life touched and changed by tragedy. welcome.

the inspiration for this story, the start of the novel in a way, was the idea that you should take the king lear story and do something with it. now, is it easy to leave the thought of that fundamental story behind, and take off on your own? at first, i suffered from a "don't mess with the bard" angst, because i was in the face of a sort of monument of world literature, but i was asked to be inspired by shakespeare, not to be intimidated by him, and it's impossible not to be inspired by shakespeare. anyone writing in english is inspired by shakespeare.

and in this case, a particular pretext in king lear, i found that quite soon i left the play behind, and became involved in the novel, and it was like all my novels, i wanted to write the next sentence and the next scene. and you've got a central character, dunbar himself, who is a media mogul, an immensely powerful man, who sees everything slipping away. i mean, his power, but also his mind, and we are with him as he becomes entrapped, really, in a world in which he can no longer understand, in which he tries to exercise power. it's a very contemporary story, isn't it? yes, i wanted to find the modern analogue for a king, and it wasn't a king, obviously, or an elected politician, but someone who is part of the permafrost of power, the people who are there decade

after decade, influencing decisions, and elections. and dunbar is such a person. but what the novel can do, that is very difficult for a play to do, except through monologues, is to show the interior life of a character, and there are no monologues in king lear, as against hamlet, who is always rushing front of stage to tell us what he is thinking and feeling. lear can't do that because his whole problem is he has no self—knowledge. so characterising the mind of someone in that situation was a new opportunity. and characterising the mind when it is beginning to break up, in a way. i mean, he is losing it... yes. as we would say, and he's having conversations, particularly with peter in the place where he is, not exactly incarcerated, but living, that are, ones that don't make any sense any longer. they make sense to us by inference, but they are incoherent

in themselves, yes. and peter is a professional comedian. he's terribly funny. he's also, unfortunately, an alcoholic. and in that sense i also departed from king lear, because i thought there should be a fool who was funny, rather than a moralising monster. how much sympathy do you have for dunbar, because in many ways he is a grotesque character. you don't indicate any sympathy for the kind of power that he wielded or how he weilded it. on the other hand, there is human sympathy for someone who is not exactly cracking up but beginning to fail in the way that he is? the way in which his acquired power is repulsive, but we feel compassion for the way he's losing power, and it's also true that it's very difficult, as you get closer and closer to someone's mind and its workings, not to feel a growing leniency.

and i suppose there's a feeling in this story, because of where it is set, and the fact he's starting to, you know, talk a fair bit of nonsense, although he's still got some of his faculties, that we all feel that there but for the grace of god, or there is where we are bound to end up. so in that sense, you're confronting the reader with a real truth about our condition? yes. i think that's true. i think there is a huge contemporary dread of losing our minds before we lose our life, and having years of mindless life, and that is one of the great phenomena of our time. although i don't think that dunbar, or indeed lear was demented. i think if they have dementia as a proper constitutional condition, it weakens the tragedy, it weakens the possibility

of recovery and self—knowledge, which he does acquire. he is temporally psychotic through pressure. and he escapes. but to what, we don't know. we don't know. what do you think he escapes to, any kind of redemption? is he going to be a less repulsive individual in the way that he wields power after this experience or not? there has to be some redemption in order for tragedy to exist, because if there is nothing but absurdity, if it is just about the meaninglessness and bleakness... it is just walking in the dark. then it is absurd and absurd is not tragic. to be tragic, there has to be a gain in self—knowledge, a gain in understanding, a gain in understanding the nature of love, and the nature of power and how he's misspent his time. and then to be deprived of those

insights, at inception, is tragic. if that's what happens. i'm not spoiling the book for you. no, we're not in the business of spoiling books. but that terrible moment, when you do have the ability to see inside yourself, in a way that you haven't before, is one of the terrifying things that we all probably will face at some stage. absolutely, although some people have, are doomed to be introspective from quite an early age. but i agree with you that, that this is a story about someone having self—knowledge thrust upon them reluctantly, very late in life, when their circuitry is barely able to take the charge. when you finish this story about dunbar and his experience,

and his wanderings and the bleakness of the fells, and then what happens at the end of the book, did you feel a sense of satisfaction about the way in which his life had found its course? did it feel right? it did feel, it felt poignant to me. i was surprised by how fond i became of dunbar. you didn't set out wanting to become fond of him? itjust happened, in the course of describing what he went through. it became very poignant to me that he got a glimpse of something before he died, that he never would have seen without this immense stress and destruction in his life. and if we're lucky enough to get that, you're saying it is a very precious thing?

it is. it is a jewel, yes. edward st aubyn, author of dunbar, thank you very much. thank you. for most of us, sunday was a pretty glorious day, but it was cold. windy as well, particularly down the east coast, plenty of showers here, too, some continuing through the night. they become more confined to the north sea coast of england, elsewhere turning drier and colder than previous nights. a widespread frost developing in several places, you can see the blue colours there. something a little less cold pushing into the north—west by the end of the night as a weather system pushes in, bringing increasing cloud and outbreaks of rain. so we start monday morning cold and frosty, you can still see the blue hue, so some places around freezing or below. we will continue to still see scattered showers and blustery conditions across the eastern coast,

particularly from lincolnshire down towards east anglia. the odd heavier one, too. for much of northern england, also a cold start, but increasing wind and cloud across the west of scotland, outbreaks of rain pushing into the western isles. this weather will continue eastwards through the course of the day, bringing rain and hill snow, even snow down to lower levels across central and eastern scotland before it all turns back to rain as the milder air moves in. for northern ireland, turning cloudy with outbreaks of rain, elsewhere a fine day, but the sunshine gradually turning hazier, and it will be another cold one. then through monday night, this weather system continues to advance eastwards, bringing stronger winds. also milder air, we lose the cold air as that weather system moves in, we're all into the yellow and orange colours. most of the country, i say. the far north of scotland continues to wax and wane

in that cooler airstream. tuesday is cloudier, outbreaks of rain, particularly across the western hills, look at those double figure values, 10—12 degrees. wednesday also rather cloudy, the best of the sunshine across northern parts of the uk, thursday looking like the mildest day across the whole of the uk, so quite a mixture this week. we're starting off cold and frosty with some sunshine, milder and cloudy for a time with outbreaks of rain, and then signs of it turning colder by the end of the week. this is bbc news. the headlines at 11. nazanin zaghari—ratcliffe, the british iranian womanjailed in iran for spying, is "on the verge of a nervous breakdown," according to her husband. in a telephone conversation with borisjohnson that he called "positive," he said the foreign secretary expressed deep sorrow for her suffering, but this evening the row over the government's handling of the case continues.

the deputy prime minister says police never told him about pornography allegedly found on his computer is. he says the allegations have an old —— ulterior motive.