speech i was not tuned into that speech because i was still recovering from the brexit business, but that was my one take away, we will strive to do better for those people just about coping. clearly this is the group being overlooked. i wonder how many candidates will wa nt to ta ke i wonder how many candidates will want to take a time when they see how difficult it was for the previous commission? if you are the government and an entire commission resigns, you abolish it or replace it in good order, you do not let it drift to the extent that the independence can put it on a bank holiday monday from page and demonstrate the government is almost unknown trousers on social mobility. find somebody to do it. maybe a woman?! iam woman?! i am busy, i could not. the daily telegraph, a beautiful photograph of spitfire veteran reaching for the skies for the raf centenary. this squadron leader alan scott, 97, took

off from biggin hill. what a way to market. do you think it is like getting on a bicycle, you don't forget? we have seen commemorations, celebrations and tributes all weekend and this is always my excuse to get my soap box and say this kind of stuff, this heroism, this quiet, dignified valour, this incredible bravery and courage under extreme duress, i find bravery and courage under extreme duress, ifind it bravery and courage under extreme duress, i find it incredibly admirable and an endangered species, which makes me depressed. i feel we are losing these kind of people and we have left the age of quiet valour, doing your duty because it is the thing to be done, we have replaced it with narcissism, a self society, how will this look, how will this appear? people used to do stuff because it was right, i am worried that is disappearing.|j think they still do but we just don't hear about it. that was the

point i was going to make, we don't talk often enough about what armed forces are doing. our efforts to bomb ices in syria is being led by the royal air force. —— our efforts to bomb isis. the royal navy have been saving refugees in the mediterranean. we do not talk enough about the good work done by the armed forces. that's it for the papers this hour. thank you, caroline and tony. you'll both be back at 11:30pm for another look at the stories making the news tomorrow. coming up next, meet the author. sir antony sher‘s portrayal of king learfor the royal shakespeare company was acclaimed as a crowning achievement in a major career. the role is so demanding it is often described as the everest of acting, and in his new book he captures every step of the journey, in a year of the mad king: the lear diaries,

he charts the months involved in researching and rehearsing and performing one of shakespeare's's most challenging parts and the obstacles he encountered along the way. sir antony sher, you have played many of the greatest roles in shakespeare from richard iii to shylock and now king lear, and you have also written fiction and nonfiction and plays, so what do you see yourself as, an actor or a writer? i quite like the fact that i do both and in fact i'm an artist as well, i paint and draw. many of the illustrations are in the books. i have a restless personality and i'm a workaholic.

so just one of those things wouldn't be quite enough to feed my habit. it is good to be able to keep going between the three. does the writing and painting and acting, do they complement each other? yes, well, the drawing and sketching, i do when i'm developing a character to work out how they might look or even how they feel. and the writing, well, in the theatre journals, it is a diary adapted from my diary, and ifind doing a diary every day very cathartic. you off—load all the stuff that might be troubling you or indeed exciting new about the work, so they do we've into one another. here you are, keeping this diary as you embark on what you say is one

of the most challenging roles you have ever played. for people who don't know king lear that well, why is it so difficult, that part? because it has a kind of epic quality. it's no accident that at the centre of shakespeare's's play there is this almighty storm. you find lear shouting at the storm. he's arguing with a storm. and that's the kind of size of the part, you sometimes feel that as an ordinary human being you are not enough for the part, that the part requires a force of nature. it requires you to be a storm yourself or stop especially

in the first half of the play because he has these huge scenes with huge rages, one after the other. enormous power and force coming off him, and later in the play it becomes gentler and quieter which is much easier to do. you write in the book about your fear of failure, your inability to scale this mountain that is this role, and some people might be surprised by this given your vast experience but that was how you feel? every time you come to one of the great shakespeare roles you risk failure but you also have this incredibly challenging exciting and frightening task of, can you match the genius of sha kespeare‘s writing?

because he creates these astonishing characters. will you be able to interpret them in a meaningful way? the production is directed by the artistic director of the rsc who is also your partner and the man you marry in the course of the book. i was struck by how much input you had into things like the casting, the design, the cuts that were made to the text, and i wondered, is that normal or do you have special privileges because you are in a relationship with the director? i think any leading actor would be invited by the director to comment on some of the things which are going into making up the production. especially in the way the design...

because, you know, if you were a director you wouldn't want your leading actor to discover on the first day of rehearsals that they are playing it in modern dress when they thought they might be in period costume. in terms of casting, i did not have much to do with that at all, although he might say to me, what do you think of so and so for a certain part? i would probably say, great, let's try and get that person. you reflect on parallels with your life and the lives of lear, and the first is your faltering health at times, with your bad shoulder, how useful were those

real—life experiences in preparation for the role? at the time they didn't feel useful, they felt too close for comfort. i also had two members of my family passed away and some other people that i knew well passed away. it felt quite strange. running through the play king lear is to paraphrase lear, the smell of mortality, a sense of the fragility of life and human life, that's a terribly strong theme in the play. and here i was rehearsing the part and acting those things but also experiencing them in real life. so it was a strange time. that was often a bit painful and difficult but thank goodness it worked out in the end. you mention a couple of times in the book

the possibility of stopping acting. are you just toying with that idea or is this a serious possibility? apart from anything else, i've spent my career as a classical actor mainly, mainly as a shakespeare actor, and i've run out of parts because he wrote three great parts for older actors, prospero, falstaff and lear, and i've done the three of them now. i'm not quite sure where i go next. female roles perhaps? in the book you talk about approaching adrian noble who ran the rsc in the 905 about playing cleopatra. maybe this idea was ahead of its time. with the gender casting being something that is now up for discussion, yes, but unfortunately i'm a little too

old for cleopatra now! i might stand a better chance of getting it now than i did at the time when adrian noble simply said, if i gave you cleopatra every leading actress in this country would lynch me. so things are a bit different now. exactly, how times have changed for top so if you are toying with giving up acting, would you ever give up writing? no, i mean, that's what... the writing and painting is what i would do if acting did come to an end. let's hope it doesn't. sir antony sher, it has been lovely to talk to you, many thanks. thank you. apart from eastern england, many

places started easter sunday very promising. cold and frosty but some sunshine, which diminished into the afternoon, apart from scotland's many places became cloudier. we start to see a change across the south—west. this next weather system will bring some pretty severe weather in the next 2a hours, already bringing wet and windy weather to seven and western areas, seeing some snow falling over the higher ground as it continues to move northwards and bumps into the cold hour. snow becoming more widespread across wales and over the high ground into the midlands, made the northern england as well by the end of the night. for much of scotla nd end of the night. for much of scotland it stays cold, dry and frosty. for the far south, some out there getting in. likely to seize and hazardous weather conditions into easter monday morning. across northern

ireland into central southern scotland, northern england, some pretty heavy snow to the higher ground, even down to lower levels. some parts of the southern uplands, the pennines, could seek up to ten of 15 centimetres of snow and a couple as lower levels. our on the strong easterly winds and there will be some drifting, maybe blizzard conditions. this continues northwards into the afternoon into more central part of scotland, bringing heavy snow. further south, it turns a little bit drier, a few showers around a much milder temperatures of ten to 13 celsius. still very cold across the north. the snow will pose a problem to lots of travel plans and easter monday. stay tuned to the weather forecast for the possible destruction from the snow. it moves northwards into tuesday, a big area of low pressure still with us means big area of low pressure still with us means the weather will remain fairly unsettled. what this low pressure will do was start pushing

milderair pressure will do was start pushing milder air across the uk as we had through tuesday, that is how it looks for the rest of the week. much milder and much more springlike. tuesday starts with the weather fronts with the heavy snow across the northern half of scotland, further drifting blizzard conditions. further south, a fair amount of cloud, outbreaks of rain but some showers and sunny spells, certainly for england and wales some of these april showers could be heavy and sunny but very much milder. this is bbc news. i'm martine croxall. the headlines at 11: israel rejects calls for an independent inquiry into the deaths of palestinian protestors in the gaza strip. at least 15 people were killed on good friday. in his easter message, the pope appeals for an end to all violent conflict, and what he calls the "carnage" in syria. a shortage of special needs funding means growing numbers of children in england are being left without suitable school places, according to the largest union for teachers. the newest member

of the labour party's governing committee, the comedian eddie izzard, says labour must stamp out anti—semitism and rebuild relations with thejewish community. and in the next hour, happy centenary, raf. ceremonies have taken place around the country, as the queen pays tribute to the men and women of the royal air force,