access to her uk pension. i work part—time. financially draining. do you feel you've been given the right support and access to help your mother come back over here? no. you feel let down? disappointed. yes. the impossible has become possible, and i hope it gives hope to all of the other one is stuck injamaica who are stranded, that there is going to be a result now. polling stations are open today across england for voting in local elections. votes are taking place in around a 150 councils, including all the london boroughs. it's the biggest test of public opinion since the general election 11 months ago. you have until 10 pm to vote. and you can watch full coverage of the local election results on bbc one and the bbc news channel from 11:45 tonight. the headlines on bbc news:

8,000 women have now called a helpline set up yesterday after the revelation of failures in breast cancer screening. the bbc understands two nhs trusts involved in administering mammograms say they raised concerns about it issues last year. president trump says his lawyer michael cohen was reimbursed for payments he gave to a porn star to keep quiet about an alleged affair, but no campaign funds were used. more than 100 people have been killed and scores injured in powerful dust storms which have battered northern india. an update on the market numbers for you — here's how london's and frankfurt ended the day. the ftse and the backs are down and the dow and nasdaq are currently up. you are up—to—date with all of our

news headlines and the markets. now it's time for meet the author. how can a writer make us care about a creature from greek mythology born of the gods asa it's a challenge for any novelist. madeline miller did it first with achilles, now she tells the story of the great sorceress and enchantress, circe, who leads us through many of the great stories of mythology, behaving badly — like she so often did — but at the same time emerging as a figure with human qualities, including of course vulnerability. who will win many readers' sympathy because she is an individual trying to make sense of a very troubled world. welcome. what is the trick in humanizing an immortal nymph like circe? well, i think i've always found

that these ancient myths really resonate with un—human nature in that they are very timeless in what they are looking at, and i absolutely felt that as i was approaching circe. here she is. yes, she's a goddess, yes, she is a nymph, but she lives in a world where she is the pawn of much more powerful people than herself and she's on the receiving end. she doesn't have a lot of control initially over what she can do with her life and where she can go, and i think we can all relate to feeling in the grip of larger powers than ourselves. nonetheless you have to bring them to life. they've got to be something more than statues in a museum, and if we're going to meet odysseus and prometheus and all these people who've got more than a walk—on parts in the story, they need to come off the wall, don't they? absolutely, and one of the things i love about the ancient myths is that

when we talk about these greek heroes we use the word hero today to talk about someone who often is a moral exemplar. the ancient greek heroes were not moral exemplars at all. they were very complex, they had huge strengths and also huge faults, and so i really wanted to honour that in all of the characters — particularly circe — to make her a person that is three—dimensional, complex with those flaws and strengths as well. and of course you turn her into a figure who still has the powers, immortality and the ability to turn people into pigs and other things that she wants to and doesn't like them, which she uses, but you give her a humanity. it's a dangerous game. you are a high school classics teacher by trade. do you ever think i'm letting this side down? i certainly have worried about the classics police and getting kicked out of the classics club, but i think that most classicists

agree that the stories live because they are retold and they have been retold so many times over the years in so many contradictory ways and that's why they are still with us. and it's no accident that they've been told, because they are fundamental stories. folk myths, same thing. exactly. and i think that there is no such thing as an objective, definitive version of a myth. i think they invite us into retell them. so, what about her. what sort of person do you think she becomes in your hands? well, iwanted her to be a character who is really forged by being downtrodden very early on in her life, and i think sometimes that can drive people towards then treading on others, but i think it can also draw great empathy and pity for others, and i think that's the way circe goes. and the downtrodden nature that you reveal is very much connected with her femininity. yes. this is a world, the ancient greek mythological world is a world that's

not kind to women at all. it is not kind to a lot of people, men and women, but in particular as a woman and one of these lower—level nymphs, you are prey. i would not suggest for a second that this is a tract or a great political statement, but it's undoubtedly a book deeply informed by a feminist perspective in the world, isn't it? yes, i really wanted to take this female character and put her at the centre of her own epic. women have traditionally not been the subject of epics. their lives have not been seen as important enough for an epic, and so just as odysseus gets his epic i wanted this to be her epicjourney. and in a way, the humanizing of these mythological figures has to do with the revelation of her, what we call them, psychological struggles or something? that is, to come back to the very beginning of our conversation, that is the trick. that's what makes her tick.

and for me that always comes originally with asking questions. so, the great mystery of circe is why is she turning men into pigs? how do you come to that point in your life? homer does not tell us, odysseus never asks her, and so i think it's really right for exploration. i don't believe that people do thingsjust because or on a whim, i think people have reasons for what they do. and what is your explanation in her character? without giving too much away... indeed, yes. i think she feels very betrayed and assaulted and abused at one point, and she lashes out in response to that. so, really it's vengeance for her. the ancient world is very, very distant now from people. notjust because of the timeline, but because it sort of is slipping away. the days when the children went to school and many of them learnt latin as just the inevitable thing, have long gone. there is great enthusiasm

for the classics in many schools, of course teachers are determined to keep them alive, but it's changed day, isn't it? it is changing. although as a high school teacher myself, one thing that i'm always struck by is when i do get children in the classroom and i do start talking about the myths, they are immediately gripped. i think these stories are so exciting and filled with huge emotions and things that they can identify with that i think if you can give them the chance, that children will run towards them. do you see yourself as some kind of classics evangelist here? i know you are writing a work of fiction and of the imagination in a way, but you are doing more than that. you are saying look, here are great stories and i'm trying to breed a particular kind of new life and shed some new light on them. it's always really exciting to me whenever someone comes and says i read your book and it made me go back to homer.

that is, for me, the ultimate compliment. i want these novels to be for everyone. but with circe, you made the point earlier that there's so much that is not explained that you've got the gift of the unknown to play with. yes, and as it turns out she has this whole wonderful back story that has absolutely nothing to do with odysseus. she is the aunt og the minotaur, daughter of the sun god helios, she has a connection to prometheus, she's his cousin and all of these... obviously sort of bringing everybody in. like some huge cast of a broadway musical. they are all there. if you have the opportunity to write a minotaur birth scene i feel you have to take it. absolutely. it's interesting, the struggle between somebody who is in touch with the world of the gods and the ancient conception in the world of humanity.

it's the kind of thing that wagner struggled with in the ting. how do you make this connection work? it is a big thing to take on. that really comes right out of homer, that he has this beautiful detail about her that she is the dread goddess who speaks like a human, and so i think naturally she is that a bridge. she has a sort of a foot in each world. and that is the curse, of course? yes, yes. i mean if you arejust one thing or the other you get on with it, but if you are stuck transporting yourself between these two worlds of the human understanding and the kind of eternal life of the gods how do you handle it? as you say it is kind of a curse because it means that you never fully belong anywhere, but it also gives you a very interesting perspective on each of those things. you can stand back and kind of come to see them for their faults and their strengths as well. you don't belong anywhere, but nonetheless in your conception of her you have a life that is in its own bizarre way very enriching. yes. one of the major themes

of the odyssey is odysseus has this intense longing for home, and he wants to find his home in ithaca. it is a journey. yes, it is. and i wanted her to have that same sense of searching for home, except she has to create that home. she has to make it for herself. and does she do it? she does. madeline miller, author of circe, thank you very much. thank you so much for having me. hello there, good evening. we had some lovely sunshine for some parts of the country today. it has not been glorious right across the uk. we have had a splattering of rain further north and west and still drizzly burst at the moment, but you may have heard already that we may well be heading toward a record breaking early may bank holiday. this is the record as it stands back

in1999, this is the record as it stands back in 1999, nearly 2a celsius, we are forecasting a potential 27 for the bank holiday itself. you can see the cut at the moment moving its way eastward, that process will continue as we go through this evening —— you can see the cloud. it will not be as chilli of last night and we had a touch of frost in scotland. it could get down to about three in the southeast and countryside but by and large a mild night. sylla rep to leave a weather front close by to the north of scotland and northern isles so there will be furthering and have your breast to come bristol and have your breast to come bristol and northwesterner also still cool of littleton friday across the highlands and the islands of scotla nd highlands and the islands of scotland and elsewhere by promising. let's cut to date use of scotland commies in northern ireland so temperatures responding into the high teens. he could see a degree or two higher in the southeast than we had today with 17. for the bank holiday weekend warmer still particularly across england and wales, but does let dry for most. high pressures keeping weather fronts mostly at bay, brushing to

the northwest at times and the other thing we're doing is losing the atla ntic airflow thing we're doing is losing the atlantic airflow right across at the moment picking up this warmer air, drierairas moment picking up this warmer air, drier air as well so that in itself would indicate a bit more sunshine to come as well but cloud amounts will always be the bane for the next few days. saturday for example could be low cloud, first thing and then the fungi will burn its way through because it is quite strong now, the sunshine and we will be lovely warmth. but with the approach of the weather system in the northwest it is bound to get cooler, cloudy or wet conditions later on scotland. still meandering around sunday, looks a bit wetter but again it is just the far north and west we feel from the bulk of northern ireland, scotla nd from the bulk of northern ireland, scotland england and wales, warming. 25 celsius by sunday. what about bank holiday monday? the high pressure will build and push weather fronts away from the north we think and the heat will build, push its way northward into the high teens, low 20s across the north, but

possibly 27 in the south. that will bea possibly 27 in the south. that will be a new record for bank holiday weekend. not unusual to have warm early in may but i think you'll agree with me very welcome considering what we had last weekend. hello, i'm kasia madera, this is outside source. president trump says he did cover the cost of a payout to silence the porn star, stormy daniels. but he insists no campaign money was used. reports in washington that 3 americans held in a labour camp in north korea could be released soon, president trump tweets "stay tuned!" on world press freedom day, a warning from the un that threats againstjournalists are increasing, we'll hear about the bbc service that faces persecution. and we'll look at the giro d'italia, one of cycling's biggest races has its startline in israel.