exploit so they seem to be able to exploit so they can do fewer affordable households and it used to be in the past that we had various other places were people who were essential workers but did not get paid a huge amount could rent cheaply or buy houses astutely and we don't have those options any more and we are building these times and in these places between oxford and cambridge, for example, they are talking about three huge times being built. and, of course, for the people who live around in this little villages, you are talking about years of disruption and that sort of thing. is that the right place? if the councils don't building enough houses the government will intervene. the london mayor has been quite strong on this because he has seen through some of these loopholes and not only are these big developers not building enough affordable housing but they are basing the affordable on something

thatis basing the affordable on something that is completely wrong because as prices go up, they put the affordable at an impossible place. like you said, nurses and doctors and teachers simply would not be able to afford them. i think there needs to be a real mission to create... like when the welfare state was created. part of a nation's mission. public housing is the way to go. where do you get the land from? a lot of those sites are being held by developers, waiting for the right moment, they might have paid a lot of money for that and did not give that away for a song. do you know how much of britain is built upon? it is so tiny, the decorously tiny, less than 596. tiny, the decorously tiny, less than 5%. we have an extraordinary panic about being built up and there is a lot of space. when they say that,

they take into account loads of areas where you cannot even really build houses. these things are more possible than we have thought but i think it has to be a government led thing, not led by the developers. you cannot just —— just thing, not led by the developers. you cannotjust —— just put houses in the middle of the field. you have to have all the infrastructure and amenities and services, hospitals, doctors, schools? milton keynes. it works quite well. that was a mission, something they did. we will finish with gary oldman, on the front of the sunday times, nominated foran front of the sunday times, nominated for an oscar for best actor, i think. and he almost did not take that part? look at the difference. it is astonishing is the way that he played churchill, astonishing. you just do not recognise him at all. no. he does not look anything

like... just transformed! who shall be cast as churchill? you would not think gary oldman. he almost did not ta ke think gary oldman. he almost did not take that, he thought so many people have played churchill better than i could hope for and here he is. amazing actor. the range of roles he has taken on. and he has never won this. he did win the bafta last month so we have recognised him. i quite like these old school things, making it up as you go along, but had the graphics. it is not like that every night! that's it for the papers this hour. we'll be back at 11.30pm for another look. hopefully with graphics! next on bbc news, it's meet the author. aida edemariam has written an unusual biography — a rich and engrossing story of a woman of whom none

of her readers will ever have heard. the wife's tale is the story of her own grandmother, born 100 years ago, and a picture of her country, ethiopia. it reads beautifully, as if it's told in her voice, a book that will take you gently and unforgettably into another world. welcome. what was the quality of this story, the potential in this story, that convinced you that people who had never known your grandmother and have never been to ethiopia would want to read it? it was listening to her, it was listening to her language, her words, her stories. i kind of knew that they would translate quite well into english and that they would work.

you spoke to her and recorded her over a long period. i mean, not continuously, but you heard her talking. and what's striking about the book is that, although it's narrated by you, it's told by you, the rhythms and cadences of her language, the poetry of her language, the simple poetry of normal day speech, really comes through, and that's what's alluring about it. and that's really what convinced you? yes, it really did. there are a couple of things. one of them is it's an oral tradition. she didn't read until she was in her 605. in an oral tradition, stories are remembered and told again. in ethiopia, the effect and the skill with which you tell a story is really important. the other thing that's obvious to anyone who approaches the book is, of course, that it's set in a country which has gone through huge convulsions in the century of the life that you mentioned —

she died five years ago. let's just go through that because the world that she grew up in — there was going to be a fascist invasion, there were going to be various political upheavals, the haile selassie years that we all remember, and, i suppose, to the current generation at home, the famines in the horn of africa, which have been such a crisis. so it was always going to be a troubled life. yes, but there's always pockets ofjoy and, for her, dancing. and you tell stories and you find little pockets where you can chat and enjoy things. in a way, it's a story of perseverance and survival. it is, and those big things happen to ordinary people, and history's lived by ordinary people. and i guess that's one of the things i was trying to get across. you talk about the fact that your grandmother didn't learn to read until she was in her 605. can you really imagine what life was like for her

when she was a teenager, when she was in her 205? do you find it easy to picture? it took a while. i had maybe 60 hours of tape. i listened, and then i went away and read lots in the british library and read accounts of daily life, and then i went back and listened again. when you've got that lairing, you can start to imagine just the sort of warp and weft of it. because it's quite clear, in the way she must have talked to you, that the descriptive richness of it was considerable — i mean, the plants, the animals, the sky and so on. she was like that. the way she described cooking, for example, it was incredibly detailed. so there's a sort of party that happened every year, it was massive, and it took up a lot of her life. so the drama would be in describing how you make meat.

that was where it was located and therefore i had to try and recreate that somehow. and, also, the shocks to daily life that came about from political events that were sometimes really very distant. they are distant, but they always have ripples, and sometimes quite unexpected ripples. and, i guess, that was kind of what i was trying to catch, it was one of the things that, you know, she might be distant but, another moment, she'd be very close, like very close to the emperor — trying to petition him, for example. so you are talking about a world that we can only know in our imaginations. and yet, what you've been able to do, from these conversations, i think, is to create something which is very real. i mean, you can smell the food. i grew up there. your father's ethiopian, your mother is canadian. with the food, the food continued.

in rural ethiopia, the life is not that different, necessarily, that it was, you know, 100 years ago, 1,000 years ago, even. it was almost an excuse to go back to my childhood and get the feel and smell and touch of things. people will come to conclusions about your grandmother as they read the book, but what's your assessment of how she felt about her youth and about the circumstances of hergrowing up? because it seems that she was a person of great calm and few regrets. is that fair? i think, when stuff happens to you so early, and when it happens across the culture, there is an acceptance of it and an unquestioning of it. so any questions came much later. i think she regretted not having been able to read and some of the opportunities that she might

have had, but she would also say, well, that was the way it was. it's very, very touching when, at the end, you come to her death and, more to the point, her burial. it was obviously a very moving experience for you. it was. i'd never been to a funeral of somebody i knew before, apart from anything else. it's very visceral. and i think irish culture does something similar where grieving is very much allowed and expected, but there are systems. she was buried by the church into which she was married. and there's a procession, and the priests are in theirfull regalia. and the whole town, basically, sees her pass. one of the things, finally, that i think is striking about the book — you've kept yourself out of it almost entirely. why? it wasn't about me. it's about somebody who is very different to me. and, i think, you can show your working, as it were,

but then you just get in the way. and if i had put myself into it more, i would have been explaining it. and ijust wanted it to exist absolutely on its own terms and to come off the page on its own terms. that's an interesting answer. and, because of your conversations, you felt you could render it faithfully as it were, without your intervention. i hope so, yes. aida edemariam, author of the wife's tale, thank you very much. thank you. welcome along to the latest look on what is left of the weekend weather prospects. we will give you a heads up on what is to come, and given what we have gone through, you will be relieved to hear, the cold snap is easing. but with this area of low

pressure not a million miles away for the next three days at the least, i'm afraid it will stay unsettled. sunshine in short supply, no doubt. at least, given the dominance of that area of low pressure, rather than the scandinavian high—pressure that fed in that cold air over the past week or so, temperatures slowly will gradually rise across all parts of the british isles. these scenes will become but a memory, at least some people have had the opportunity of, rather than slogging through the drifts, enjoying what that snow can bring. overnight, we will find more snow gradually easing its way out of the midlands and the heart of wales, further north, this is an area of continuous snow. not particularly heavy but it will add to those accumulation and further snow showers ahead of that on a cold night across northern parts. the first signs of that milder air already tucking into the southern counties of england and wales. you should be aware that if you are on the move first up on sunday morning, there could be a problem

on untreated surfaces with ice. especially across the northern part of britain. through the morning and into the afternoon, the showers will be watery rather than wintry across the south—west, transferring east, and further north, a matter of snow for the most part but slowly through the course of the day, with temperatures picking up already, you will find the snow levels rising. the sporting fixtures, such as they are, man city versus chelsea, there shouldn't be a massive issue, temperatures around 6 degrees or so. we will find those temperatures lifting during the course of the week, that unsettled look, feeling less cold and the risk of snow will become confined to the hills and there you will see eventually double figures prevailing across the southern half of britain, temperatures on the up even further north.

this is bbc news. the headlines at 11:00: an end to the freezing weather is coming, but thousands of homes tonight remain without power. high tides and strong winds mean several flood warnings in place as the snow melts. further travel disruption is expected. three men have been charged with manslaughter and arson over an explosion in leicester which left five people dead and a number of people injured. president trump threatens to impose new taxes on cars imported into the us from the european union. and video assistant referees are set to be used at this year's world cup in russia after football's lawmakers voted to approve the technology. and on the eve of the oscars, we speak to the next generation of filmmakers about hollywood's fightback against sexual harassment.