all been e‘ll w——l unlflr lfl w——l unlflr wlm have all been talking about al and thinking it is sinister but it could make a good difference. all this thing with robots and the deep technology which i do not even begin to understand. it could be fantastic. when you think about glaucoma and diabetes and the huge impact they could have, this sort of thing could make a difference to people's eyes. finish as off, if the weather does not. the killerfreezes coming. it is going to be cold but i keep thinking, we have an unprecedented number of homeless people now living in doorways and so oi'i people now living in doorways and so on and up to a point, i think they can survive some temperatures, but i wonder how many of them will not survive unless councils make special provision for them or some of them just do not want to go indoors. we never know the number of homeless people who die overwinter, we know how many elderly people die, we need to count them. 0k. pressure on the

nhs always tends to come. and fuel bills, the cold weather is a hard thing to cope with for everyone. that is it for the papers, but we will be back at half past 11. join us will be back at half past 11. join us then. now it is time for meet the author. we all watch other people, but most of us feel uncomfortable when we become too curious about them. why they're doing this or that, what they're thinking. consent by leo benedictus is a novel that describes the nightmare of a curiosity that becomes an obsession. cruel and destructive, it takes us into the mind of a stalker whose life is shaped by his targets, his victims. quite simply, it is a contemporary horror story. welcome. the central figure in this

book has got a mind which is clearly disturbed. and you had to get inside it. because you're telling the story from his point of view for most of the book. how difficult was it to do that? i suppose the honest answer is it maybe wasn't as difficult as i'd like it to have been. what does that say about you? well, i know, i mean, i think for me... in a way the primary aspect of the book was the way that i am going to talk to readers, and the way that he is going to talk to readers. and i found that by talking in that intimate, deeply present way, that think he feels in relation to the people that he stalks, i found myself quite naturally talking like him. i mean i spent a long time writing the book, about five years, and i think it probably

grew over time. but by the end of it i could talk like him at the drop of a hat, a bit too easily. we're talking about a man who is a stalker, who stalks dozens and dozens and dozens of people, remembers the first one and so on. it then becomes a violent obsession late in the book. but what fascinates me, as we were saying at the beginning there, is that we are all, to some extent, curious in that way. you can sit opposite somebody in the train and you think, why are they reading that, where are they going, what are they doing? but we all know there is a point beyond which you don't go. and imagining what happens when you don't have that control mechanism is really quite terrifying, isn't it? i think so. i certainly felt that way. do you know, i'd be interested to know how many other novelists feel this way, because being a novelist especially, i've found, after my first book, i was looking at people all the time, and making little mental notes all the time about details of behaviour and... someone would say something in a conversation and secretly i'd be at work thinking, that would be

good, i can use that. i think all of us are stalkers in that way. in one sense, this character does some dreadful things in the second half of the book, it's just doing that, it's just that it becomes a habit and he thinks it's quite normal. yeah, he clearly never notices a moment when he goes off the rails, and i think really struggles with the idea that maybe he has gone off the rails, but he could put his finger on exactly when it happened. and i do like that idea as well of how blurred the line is between being interested in someone, maybe fancying someone, maybe wanting to talk to someone, maybe finding out a little bit more about them before you do. and before you know it you're standing outside their house. yeah, exactly. i mean, i think that's how it works for him, yeah. do you have an attraction to horror? i mean here we have a situation in which he is inside people's bedrooms, inside their heads, watching their most intimate behaviour, you know, their conversation with

a lover for example. it's terrifying stuff. i suppose i must do, yeah. i don't know exactly why. i know that for a long time i felt when writing novels actually a sense of guilt about what i'm doing, because i know that i'm not doing it in the interest of readers, i'm not trying to bring them something generous and mind expanding, i'm just writing because i need to and i'm writing about what interests me. i'm hoping that i can grip their attention for long enough to make them interested. so he's just a writer who's gone a little bit further. well, yes he is, though i don't think i'm likely to go that far myself. but it's a way, certainly, of exploring those feelings i've always had about writing. when you began the story with the idea of getting inside the head of a man who is behaving in this very odd way, did you always know that it was going to end with some scenes that are difficult to read and must have been difficult to write?

igot... i can't say i always knew, no. i think i knew he was going to lose control of himself, and i think probably if i'd analysed that i would have known, but ina way maybe i didn't want to know, just like he doesn't. well, i think to the reader, when you open this book, you do sense that it is going to end rather badly. i mean you don't think he's going to stop doing it. no, i wouldn't have thought so, and i don't think he has the ability to control himself, and i think he makes it clearfrom the beginning that he is trying to justify his own behaviour, trying to understand what he's done, hopefully make people understand him. there is an intriguing note on the dust cover of the book where you say, this book is an experiment. what exactly do you mean by that? well, to my mind it's an experiment between me and the reader. he is conducting experiments of various kinds on the people that he stalks, but it's also an experiment i think i'm making really to see how people will respond to this book.

i won't necessarily know, of course, but i want to take people to the point, this involves stuff towards the very end of the book, where they've had a creepy and maybe horrifying experience. maybe they discover that it's been creepy and horrifying in a way they hadn't realised all along, and that is where it comes into the relationship with me writing a book. it's fascinating, i said at the beginning, that it was a contemporary horror story. and really, what you're talking about here, is a world in which, you know, individuals are moving in different ways, apart from being quite lonely, even in the context of, you know, their social lives. and this guy is somehow exploiting that. the solitary nature of contemporary life. were you very conscious of that?

well, i was, i think particularly... the book is really, we talked all about him and it's a book split into two halves, really, between him and her. frances, the woman that he stalks in particular. she is, i think, quite a lonely person. i think a lot of people are quite lonely. we indeed have a lot of research on how widespread loneliness is. and that's her vulnerability, really. yeah, absolutely. i mean i think he wants to connect with peoplejust as i do by writing novels, just as she does by making friendships and forming relationships. so there's a desperation about his position. yeah, very much. i think lonely people are always desperate to make that kind of connection and sometimes something goes wrong, as it does with him. he can't do it and he tries these terrible ways to feed this craving. he is unusual because by accident, completely unexpectedly, he becomes, suddenly, very rich. he doesn't have to work he doesn't have to worry about money. the world is his oyster. in a way that releases

him to be the man he really is underneath. in that sense we are not all like him. no, we're lucky because we don't suddenly inherit millions of pounds. i think for him it is a tragedy that he becomes as rich as he does. for a lot of people that are extremely rich, it is a severe problem. i know that sounds ridiculous. it's many of our greatest dreams to become as wealthy as he is. do have to think about how to spend your life, and that's a hard question to answer. and he doesn't know the nature of his tragedy, but we do. yeah, exactly. i hope... you know, i do, in spite of everything he does, feel a lot of sympathy for him. i sometimes feel a little awkward about how sympathetic towards him i feel. not obviously for the things he does, but for how he feels, yeah. we're talking about the main character in consent, who talks to us about his awful life. leo benedictus, thank you very much. thank you. cold snaps come and go and as far as

this week is concerned we will be in the middle of one. we ended the weekend on a final note. as far as the week ahead is concerned, it will be cold enough force to. some sunshine as well. let us look at the forecast. snow showers in parts of lincolnshire, east anglia and the south—east. hit and miss and some of us south—east. hit and miss and some of us might get a dusting, others will get nothing. many in the north and west will be clear, a frost on the way, a

chilly morning. let us look at the south—east, kent, sussex, essex, the greater london area, we could catch some snow flurries. this will coincide with the rush—hour. these are snow showers. coincide with the rush—hour. these are snow showers. only five miles across. some of us will get them. wintry showers on the north sea coast and elsewhere it starts off fu rley coast and elsewhere it starts off furley bright. a chilly day on the way, the best of the sunshine in northern and western areas, a beautiful day for glasgow and edinburgh, sunshine expected in plymouth, but in central and eastern areas, clouds coming through, a breeze and the chance of wintry showers through the course of the afternoon. this weather front, showers through the course of the afternoon. this weatherfront, it will move into the cold air during the course of monday night. snow in scotland, northern ireland into the north—west of england, not a lot, ten centimetres on the hills, a couple of centimetres here and there. by the middle of tuesday, in there. by the middle of tuesday, in the afternoon, that weather front will have effectively snowed itself

out and behind it those temperatures will drop rapidly through the night. frosty wednesday, dues denied into web ‘s day, wednesday of self, we are in between weather systems, a little window of brighter weather on tuesday and wednesday and on thursday, it looks like things will cloud over and turn less cold. this is the summary for the week, it will be pretty cold, or widespread frost and there will be some snow as well. this is bbc news. i'm rachel schofield. the headlines at 11. the cabinet is more united than the brexiteers think, says amber rudd, ahead of a crucial few days for the negotiations.

we meet in the committee, we meet privately for discussions. i think we will arrive at something that suits us all. two people have been killed and more than 100 injured, after two trains collided with each other in the united states. south africa's president, jacob zuma, is being urged to step down as leader of the anc, during a meeting with top party officials. political limbo continues in germany, as angela merkel‘s party fails to form a coalition government. talks continue tomorrow. also this hour, england get their six nations campaign off to a winning start.