levels of 11 have roughly normal levels of blood clotting proteins. if this is how much backdate you or i produce, this is how much is produced in their haemophilia patient, but you can see after the gene therapy trial it is almost up to normal. this is huge, ground—breaking, because the option to think about normalising levels in patients with severe haemophilia is absolutely mind blowing. to offer people the potential of a normal life when they've had to inject themselves with factor eight every other day to prevent bleeding is transformational. it's a really exciting time for people with haemophilia, this could be life changing. we need to understand who it works for. we need to understand why it works for those people and why it works for those people and why it works for those people and why it might not work for some other people. and understand the long—term implications and side effects. studies will take place to see if gene therapy can replace these regular injections and truly transform the lives of patients. james gallagher, bbc news.

we're finishing earlier than normal on thursdays this month because next on thursdays this month because next on the bbc news channel is meet the author. sometimes, an author makes a big demand of a reader. nick harkaway does that in his novel gnomon — an intricate, complicated story on a vast canvas, set in a future britain where we're living in a surveillance state, although it's one that most people seem to believe is fundamentally good. but this is, among many other things, a murder mystery. something's gone wrong and there is a fiendish puzzle, many fiendish puzzles, to be solved. gnomon, after all, is the name for the part of a sundial that casts a shadow. welcome. it is a tough challenge for a reader, this book. you even put a puzzle on the frontispiece,

which is like an entry test for gchq. something encrypted. you're saying right from the beginning, look, i hope in a good way, but you're going to have to work at this? yeah, absolutely. and it's actually not the only puzzle in the book, it's just the only one that announces itself right on the front page. how do you go about planning a book like this that is full of ambiguities, double meanings, people who come and go in terms of time? it's extraordinary complicated. very difficult to plan in advance, i would have thought. yeah. in fact it was impossible to plan in advance. i didn't really understand what i was getting into when i started it. i had a direction and then i sort of dived in. but what i have to keep doing was write a piece and then write around it and then go back and make sure it all married up. in a sense, it is not so much planned as it is layered or accreted, like a rock formation.

and it was difficult, but also incredibly exciting for that. i had to trust that i'd done it right the first time. we are going to have to explain something of the plot, although it is extraordinarily difficult. we could be here for half an hour. but we are talking, in effect, rather touchingly, about a murder mystery at the heart of it, but it is set in the future, in this country, in which people are experiencing the ultimate surveillance state. but the irony is they think it's quite a good thing, a lot of people think it is a good thing. yeah, and it's notjust a surveillance state, it's also a rolling plebiscite democracy, so they're all deeply in mould. the fact that they're transparent is actually supposedly to their advantage, because they want everything to be known so they can have all these amazing services they get. but i just sort of... i find it weirdly seductive at the same time as being terribly alarming, because it wants to solve so many of your problems for you. we are in science—fiction territory, really, to give it a genre title. but you must have felt... i know this book took you two or three years to write, as it inevitably would,

you must have found that events around you were moving at a breakneck pace which made you rethink the whole time. absolutely. the thing is that when i started writing the book, i was writing a science—fiction novel, or a novel with a science—fictional shape. but, actually, by the time it came out, it's actually not science—fictional any more in that the technology i amended of surveillance is all now pretty much existent. in the summertime, a woman called doris tsao at caltech, in america, announced that she and her team had successfully pulled an image directly from the brain of a monkey. and it is a passport photo quality image. so the central mcguffin of the book that made it fantastical when i started writing is now just plausible. you've given it the name gnomon. explain that title, because it is something that will be arresting people. a gnomon is, apart from anything else, the bit of a sundial that

actually tells the time. it is also just something that sticks out, something that is perpendicular to the rest of the world. and, obviously, detective stories... different. exactly. ..are about things that stick out, clues and so on automatically things that attract your attention. you must be a puzzle fiend. it is pretty clear from the book. to be honest, i'm terrible at puzzles. i want to be a puzzle fiend. i love to have that kind of mind and i can set them, but i'm not very good at solving. you mentioned a code at the front of the book earlier and i set it. it took me for ever to do it. and i am convinced it is either something people will get almost immediately, by making one intuitive leap, or actually the method i used is too lossy and you can't get the information back. because you don't tell anybody what the puzzle is meant to produce in the end. there is no indication of what you should do with it. but if you have, if you say, that kind of mind... do you know anybody who has broken it? i don't know anybody who has broken.

i know two or three people are working on it and they resist... they may still be working on it years from now. they may, or they may be working on it right now and solving it. they resist hints from me, so i can't...| have no notion of what's going on. take us through the plot a little bit because it would be quite nice to get some of the names. we've got diana hunter. now, speak about the name that has classical resonance, that's. .. yes, absolutely, names are very important in this book and they all have sort of hidden meanings and so on. nothing is only one thing. everything is ambiguous. we have diana hunter, who is a refusenik, who rejects this surveillance society. she, we know on the first page, is dead. it is her death that mielikki neith must investigate through this sort of strange landscape. she is the police officer? yes, well, the inspector of the witness, which is the police equivalent. the witness — it is almost... we are in an orwellian world, although it's good rather than bad, we think. but the witness is a little bit reminiscent of where we are in 1984. well, and where we are in 2017. we live in an absolutely very heavily surveilled country and it is becoming more true. the witness is the collected surveillance and phone cameras so on of the society in which mielikki neith lives.

we talked about it being science fictional, but actually, we could have that society within, say, five or ten years, if we decided to put the infrastructure together. that trend is in ours in britain today. the story is very complicated and at various points in the story people are bound to say, hang on a minute, have i got this right? that doesn't seem to bother you. no, i think it's ok for a book to ask you to try hard and maybe to read it again. it is interesting. i was delighted, i had a first note back from somebody who is reading it for the second time and saying it's almost even better. which is incredibly reassuring. it is just desperately what you want. you want something that people will pick up for a second time for a start. gnomon itself, if i can call it

and it, it is a kind of intelligence that operates backwards as well as forwards. is that a reasonable way of putting it? i think it is. yes, i mean gnomon is the overtly science—fictional strand that runs through the book. because, give no, and i'm completely comfortable with saying that. it is interesting, i had been querying whether the book as a whole this science fictional, because i think we use that term, particularly in news broadcasts in the uk, we use that to say, oh, by the way, you can stop listening now, because this isn't real. and i worry about that, because very often you hear it in connection with deep data—processing and with biological advances like crispr cas, where you can manipulate the gene. and the sort of tenor is, oh, by the way, this isn't part of the important cultural discourse. and it really is. we have to start paying attention. we live technologically and scientifically in an extraordinary time and i have very little patience with literary writing that refuses to engage with that, because i think technology has become the substrate, the underlying layer of our society

and of ourselves. you can't be writing about humanity now and pretending we don't have a technological society. you're suddenly writing a kind of historicalfiction based in sort of 1981, and it's not real, it's not honest. and, also, a technological society that can, at the flick of a switch, the blink of an eye, makes an extraordinary leap forward that we can hardly imagine. yeah, but the reason we can hardly imagine is because very often we won't talk about it until after it's happened. there was a case in ohio, a little while ago, where pacemaker evidence was admitted to break a suspect‘s alibi. well, you know, if there is anything more intimate and private than the actual beating of your heart, it is what is in your head, and here we have technology which is, in the first instance, a medical research, medical technology that is supposed to heal that has the potential to be part of criminaljustice, and if we are going to allow that, we should talk about how and when and how much, because otherwise it becomes very sinister. in other words, it's a book that makes you think, or should make you think?

i hope so. nick harkaway, author of gnomon, thank you very much. it's fair to say it's been a wintry week on whether but looks as though mother nature releases her grip a little mentor as we move towards the weekend. for today it'll be a quiet story in terms of weather. northerly winds driving in showers of the north sea coast, one or two into the south—west. in between the two, dry with sunshine coming through. wintry showers into the far north of scotla nd showers into the far north of scotland and as we go through the night, clear skies allow frost to form. looks as though saturday will be the last of the cold days, still under the influence of the cold air. in the second half of the weekend, the south—west wind will drive in milder but slightly wetter conditions from the west. we'll start on saturday on a frosty note

for many, the exception is northern ireland, wales, south—west england. more clout and if you scattered showers. when we got the clear skies and sunshine after that frost, temperatures are not going to recover very quickly, in fact, afternoon highs of three degrees. it'll be cold in the south—west. the mild airon its it'll be cold in the south—west. the mild air on its way as we've told you. this nose of high—pressure quietens down through the night but it won't be long before this weather from start to influence the story by the end of the weekend. it'll bring rain, some heavy, for a time, into northern ireland, scotland, eventually western fringes of wales and south—west england. a south—westerly wind, mild air starts to push on, double—digit in cloud and rain. that'll sweep through overnight, sunday, into monday, then the high pressure will build. this is quite important because it looks likely to set the trend for next week. the high—pressure stays under the influence to the south. a

south—westerly wind will continue to drive ina south—westerly wind will continue to drive in a few more showers. 8—12d. eventually we'll see a weather front starting to squeeze in from the north—west. the isobars squeezing together. the wind strengthening. all the time central and southern areas will be under the influence of this high—pressure. it could lead to some frost and potentialfog this high—pressure. it could lead to some frost and potential fog which could be slow to lift. mild for, double—digit widely for all on tuesday. potential for showers which could turn into rain as the frontal system pushes in through web. highs of 9-12d. system pushes in through web. highs of 9—12d. let's recap. so far this week this has been the story. the jet stream has been to the southern half, southern flank, of the uk. to the north of the jet stream it allows this north—west flow along the cold side of the jet. into next week, thejet the cold side of the jet. into next week, the jet stream will move. in actual fact it'll pushed to the north and west of us. what that will do is allow the south—west flow to

kick in. mild for all, but also it'll deflect low—pressure into the north—west. it looks likely into next week that we could see areas of high—pressure cleaning on into the south—east corner. early—morning frost and fog could be an issue but at the same time the south—westerly flow will continue to drive in areas of low— pressure flow will continue to drive in areas of low—pressure into the north and west. that is where we are likely to see the most unsettled weather into next week. just to recap it looks as though it'll stay mild for most of next week, with spells of ring chiefly to the north and west. most of the dry weather into the south. that is how it is looking. i haven't alluded to christmas weekend but we'll do that tomorrow. take care. tonight at ten — a national service of remembrance for the victims of the grenfell tower disaster, six months on. more than 1500 people attended the multi—faith service at st paul's cathedral, including members of the royal family.

among those who took part were relatives of those who died, as others questioned whether the deaths could have been prevented. today, we ask why warnings were not heeded, why a community was left feeling neglected, uncared for, not listened to. and tonight, in the streets of west london, a silent march to involve more of the local community in today's remembrance. we'll be reporting on the service at st paul's and we'll be talking to some of the families who attended. also tonight. theresa may is attending the eu summit in brussels,