i'm asking you... that is a sort of mix between personal and political reaction. i think it is not feasible when you are president of a republic like the us republic but like the french republic... to respond too much. i'm asking you with a slight smile on my face but it's very serious, something like the north korean situation, when trump basically says, "my nuclear button is bigger than your nuclear button", a lot of people in the world think it is slightly unhinged and very dangerous. yes, but the best answer you can provide to that is what? just to say, we have to work very closely and seriously to force north korea to come back to the table of negotiations. we have to follow the un sanctions and implement them and the critical country in order to deliver it is china. absolutely. that is what we discuss with president xi. talking about bringing countries back... calm down, everybody. is there any chance at all of persuading americans to come back to the table on the paris climate change agreement? first of all, i don't think

there is any option to come back to the table of negotiations for the paris agreement. i've always been very clear, it is negotiated and signed, it isjust deciding to sign what is done. to sign it, then? we negotiated, more than 180 countries signed and are being ratified. come on, we will not renegotiate for one people so i believe it's a big mistake. i called him and said there is no new negotiation. you join or you don't. china decided to remain in the loop. we will deliver, i think we have to accelerate. but what i see is that the private sector and the states in the us are following the signs. they are trying to comply with the agreement. so we will do it. i think it is a mistake but there will be no renegotiation but i hope an option to join the treaty as negotiated. and if you want to hear more

from president macron, you can see the full interview at 8.30pm, here on the bbc news channel. now it's time for meet the author. a car bomb in paris. a widow returns to the western isles, joined before long by a french detective on her trail. the two women try to work out what has happened and why and their lives as a result are intertwined. a thriller by peter may, called i'll keep you safe, that moves from a contemporary world of crime and violence to a place where apparently they still cling to many of the old ways. another puzzle, another story that twists and turns, and for him, another international bestseller. welcome. a rather obvious question.

what makes a good thriller, peter? a good question. i've no idea! imean... you know it when you see it? i think that's exactly right because there's no formula and if you knew what the formula was, you'd have a bestseller with every book you wrote. i think engaging the reader, more than anything else. i think it's notjust even about thrillers. it's about any story that you're telling. you set yourself a problem because what you've got to do over a couple of pages at the very beginning of this book is give us a scottish gaelic glossary, otherwise no one would understand the names because most of it, a large part of it is set in the western isles. yes. so you needed to give that guide. it's quite a thing to have to do, isn't it? it is. you know, from my days working in television, i've filmed up in the western isles for five months a year for five years and got very familiar with the sound of gaelic. i still don't speak it. no. but i generally know how to pronounce names and words

but most people don't, because, you know, ithink the gaelic alphabet is only 18 letters, you know, so it's all these strange combinations of letters to make a single sound. two of the main characters, niamh and ruairidh, with the gaelic spelling of ruairidh and niamh of course, which a lot of irish people will be familiar with as well, but you need to get people into the sound world, don't you? you do, yes, otherwise they are repeating in their own heads a mispronunciation right from the start. and that would be unfortunate because what you want to do in evoking the place, its strange, largely flat contours, its kind of bleakness but its beauty that can hold you, you know, in a trance on a fine day, which... there aren't that many of on the west coast of lewis. no! but it's a very haunting place, isn't it? it is. you know, as i say, ifilmed up there and we had a daily schedule

and you were at the mercy of the elements the whole time. and they were very rarely in your favour. so it was hard, hard work and it makes such an impression on you. i mean, the minute you step off the plane, there, you are struck by the wind and the wind never stops and it's there the entire time. very few trees. yeah. let's talk about the plot. as i said at the beginning, there's an explosion, a car explosion, a bomb in paris. we can say that much. and then we're off and what we have is a contrast between a contemporary world with which we are very familiar, strange, violent events interrupting the modern pattern of life, and then we go back to a different way of life, where people are clinging to, well, making cloth in the old way, talking with a language which, you know, is shrinking in its usage quite fast. there is a wonderful contrast between these two worlds. it was of great interest to me.

i mean, i first went there 30 years ago so it is kind of going back to the way i knew the islands when i first went and the way they were and they hadn't really changed in whole centuries. it is sad to say that in a way, it has changed quite a bit over the last 30 years. when i first went, there were no flights on a sunday. there were no ferries on a sunday. nothing was open on a sunday. you couldn't eat. you couldn't get petrol. everything was shut and now that's all changed. and in a way, it's a shame, the loss of the lewis sabbath because it was a kind of special day. well, they held onto that in a way that no one else had. the contrast in the book is very much part of it because what we've got, the plot that develops is the picture of two women. one, niamh, who has lost her man in this explosion, who's gone back and of course, is grief—stricken, and the detective, also a woman,

who follows her, and of course, has her in her sights. so they are opposing women but they find themselves, w 5134 well, yes, two women from very, very different backgrounds and experiences, arriving ultimately in the same landscape, in the same culture. and having to function. yes, well, absolutely, niamh, who is suffering from gried, who is suffering from grief, frankly, how do you keep

—; fizz? .; -: := j;—...~.:§~. :: 1:7 and if it is boring or dull, it's not going to work for the reader, is it? that's right. you've got to feel some of that excitement? exactly. imean... you know, i was doing an interview with. .. it was bbc radio scotland and we were doing one of those location radio interviews up on the isle of lewis, talking about the blackhouse, which is the first book that i set up there. and we went to this slipway in a tiny harbour on the north—east coast. and i had set a scene there in the book and it was a scene that i had never originally planned to do. it was a kind of bridging scene between two other scenes that i had worked out that i was going to write about. jmeanebeceuse i remember sitting

yes.