question passed that point. the question was, you % passed that point. the question was, you fi to stay in or leave. it do you want to stay in or leave. it did not ask those subtleties of, how do you want to leave, what do you wa nt to do you want to leave, what do you want to be left in and what does leaving look like? it couldn't ask that question, it had to be a very simple question. so when - the of if$ the way will the s in ~ , ,, , , ,, —— will the ‘i in which ' w, , ,, —— will the ‘i in which we ' ' '* ff we will leave, the way in which we will continue to engage with the european union, isn't it sensible in terms of sovereignty and democracy to say, is this what you still want? i would take a pounds two a penny that when people voted to leave, they voted to leave the institution e tag; ithink 95 ”1,7” "ww tag; ithinkthat‘s ”1,7” "ww people i think that's staff 77" "7"? for, to the eu and all its leave the eu and all its restrictions on the sovereignty of the country. i would have thought

that was pretty clear. all those remainers, they don't give up, do they? nearly em;;flgi:;; you ‘mil u a change —’:’*"”" it's l—llll’ it's a —llll"l it's a very important that divided 2 country. change that divided the country. that's it for the papers this hour. we better get in while they pause for breath. you don't need me here. we should leave them to it. they will be back at 11:15pm. a second look at the papers. coming up is meet the author. when you call a book ordinary people, you might be

tempted to wonder why we'd want to read about them. but diana evans takes two families who do live ordinary lives and invests them with endless interest — in their race, their class, their midlife worries and weariness, their love lives and their hopes. this is london early in the 21st century, how people live now, a book about what makes them all much more than ordinary. welcome. it is interesting, i think readers will find it interesting, that you find ordinary lives, as they're lived every day, more intriguing and more the stuff of a novelist‘s trade than melodrama. yes, what i'm trying to do with this book is to present an accurate

picture of the kind of ordinary british lives that i know. it‘s net'nssssssrih- moments in people's lives. it's more about human psychology. there are piercing moments. there are two families that become entangled for reasons that everyone will be familiar with. the boredom of a midlife marriage, all that kind of thing. you're also going into questions of race, which many of your readers won't be familiar with. they won't think that is an ordinary life. and you're taking them into lives which they won't know day in, day out.

yes, exactly, that's exactly what i'm trying to do. i think theme of race has been connected in a very direct way to black writers. i don't think there has been enough visibility of black lives and characters in their ordinariness. i think there's been this mass dehumanisation of black lives through things like the legacy of slavery and the continuing realities of racism and mainstream representations of blackness in the media. what i'm trying to do is draw attention to the ordinariness, to reclaim that ordinariness. we cover the reality of lives that most black people live in one form or another. in this case in a fairly sort of middle—class kind of way — setting. that's the milieu you have chosen. yes, of course, i mean, the black middle class is something that some people don't even know exists. i think we've never really seen it in fiction. i'm very influenced by the writer john updike, who presents a picture

of middle america in middle life, and that's exactly what i'm trying to do, but what is new about this is that i'm expressing it from a black perspective and that hasn't really been done before. very much so, because you open the book with a party that is being held to celebrate obama's election in november 2008. so the motif with which the book opens is one of celebration about that particular moment. it was a huge moment, it was universal and there was this element of real celebration and i wanted to capture that. i wanted to be able to, many years from then, to be able to open a book and remember what that felt like. it was also a dichotomous moment, because there was this darker aspect to it. london was in a moment of crisis. knife crime statistics were very high. we had also just entered

a recession, so even though it was a very celebratory moment, it was also anti—climatic, so i was trying to capture both sides of that. there is a sense, which is strong in the book, that after a high like that, as far as the characters in the book are concerned, anyway, there is bound to be inevitably, because life is life, disappointment. and, you know, a retreat from the mountaintop. yes, of course. the couples go through various smaller crisis points in their own lives but i think essentially it's quite hopeful book. it is hopeful because they are not bad people. there is no sense of creeping evil, or great mischief making or wickedness in the book. no. i think they're ordinary people trying to cope with points in their lives where they feel like they're losing a sense of self, and that's what i do in all of my books, really. my first book was about the loss of a twin, what happens beyond that loss.

the second book was about the loss of the dancing body in a dancer's life. what happens beyond, and in this book it's ordinary people wondering what happens to them beyond the massive changes of parenthood and marriage. one of the couples at the centre of the story is, i suppose, a classic suburban couple. it is part of suburbia, a very sort of common idea of how life is lived — going off to work in the morning, coming home on the same train or tube. a lot of people might look at it and think, oh, my goodness, am i going to get interested in this, am i going to get drawn into...? what is it, do you think, that draws people into a story like this, what do you have to do as a writer to make it sing? it's all about the characters. you have to inhabit your characters as the writer. their good aspects and their bad points. you have to present

characters who are immediate. also description and language is important to me. i appreciate writing that shows an interest in language, in the potential of sentences. i think when you bring those two together — character and language and description — you can create so much drama. you've got a kind of soundtrack running through the book. we can hear songs. it's a neat device, isn't it? yes, the title is taken from a john legend song, from his album get lifted. music is a big part of my life and it's very important to me. it's a big part of the characters' lives. i was trying to do something beyond literature, to bring in this other dimension. i'm always trying to do something a little bit different to push the boundaries of sentences a bit more. you talked about how

you are trying to present a picture of london, really, or how lives are lived in london. at this juncture in our story, our national story, what is your view of the state of london? people moan about house prices, busyness and dirty air and all the rest of it. what is it you feel about the place you're trying to capture? i'm a londoner. i've lived in london all my life. it's such a rich and fascinating, wonderful place. it's so full of stories and history and beauty, but there's also another side to it that is quite ugly. it's a very difficult place to live. it's increasingly difficult — financially, socially. yet there is this desire in londoners to remain in london and there is this sense of this is our home. you say this story of ordinary lives, ordinary people and their lives, is a hopeful story, why?

it is a hopeful story, because it's about the endurance of the human spirit and about the insistence on the human spirit to claim life and to claim a sense of fulfilment. so i'm trying to celebrate that in the book, as well, at the same time as acknowledging that it's difficult. diana evans, author of ordinary people, thank you very much. thank you. this big lump of cloud that has been

plaguing central and eastern areas has brought some ring. beautiful blue skies in anglesey. barely a cloud in the sky and contrast that saint leonards on sea in sussex. it was drizzly with on and offering through the day. on sunday, the theme of an east and west split continues. a brighter for theme of an east and west split continues. a brighterfor eastern areas. the best of the sunshine further west, but a better day for the south west of england and up towards the midlands compared to what we had on saturday. sunny spells. rain from northumberland up to aberdeenshire and that rain will push up to the northern isles later in the day. early showers clearing from the south—west and lifting temperatures to 18 degrees. cool around the east coast particularly around the east coast particularly around north—east scotland. the rain clearing through sunday evening and overnight. the potential to some showers to push back into east anglia and the south—east early on

monday. for many of us under the clear skies it will be a fresh start to the day. a chilly start of the working week, but things should be improving. the low pressure will be pushing into france so quite slow moving. i pressure pushing into france so quite slow moving. | pressure across scandinavia moving. i pressure across scandinavia and also building in from the south—west. areas of high pressure should lead to a fairly quiet week ahead. monday, still the chance that the front in the east can bring showers to parts of lincolnshire and east sussex. more cloud building through northern ireland and western scotland later, but temperatures doing well. a sunny day for the bulk of the country with highs of 21. tuesday is another largely fine and dry started today. cloud and patchy rain in northern ireland and north—west scotland. the rest of the country looking sunny with light winds and temperatures will be on the up. highs of 23 degrees in the south—east and 16—18 in scotland and northern ireland. pressure continuing to build through the week ahead, looking mainly dry

and in those spells of sunshine it should feel pleasantly warm. this is bbc news. the headlines at 11:00 — one person has died and five others wounded after a knife attack in central paris. the attacker has been shot dead. one of britain's most notorious serial killers, dennis nilsen, who was serving a life sentence in full sutton prison, near york, has died. votes are being counted in iraq after the first parliamentary elections since the government declared victory over the so—called islamic state group. tens of thousands of people march through central london, demanding better pay and improved job security. and a man has stormed the stage while the uk's entry, surie, was performing at the eurovision song contest.