does not seem like these things, he does not seem like your stereotypical billionaire. he is worth £21 billion. that is extraordinary. he has made several billionjust this year so extraordinary. he has made several billion just this year so he has experienced a brexit bounce perhaps. speaking for the remainer, experienced a brexit bounce perhaps. speaking forthe remainer, i experienced a brexit bounce perhaps. speaking for the remainer, i did find it quite amusing that britain's leading businessmen turns out to be against the united states of europe, i thought that was quite funny given that we assume that business is in favour of the closest possible links with the eu. the point was made, on the rich list, this is the first time ini the rich list, this is the first time in i think 15 years is that the list was born in britain rather than somebody who had moved to the country and brought their wealth and entrepreneurial spirit with them. country and brought their wealth and entrepreneurial spirit with themlj have to confess, i had never heard of the man. i had dimly heard of his

chemical company. if you had asked me what business they were in, i would not have been able to tell you. but it is an interesting story. i think it is sort of random as to who comes out top of the list. you never quite know how they are accessing... people have companies, there is stuff in the public domain... as and when you get to such a high amount, it starts to lose perspective when they get up or down. some people have suggested it is not a good thing if it has gone from inherited to self—made because nobody needs £20 billion. but the idea that business create employment and jobs and it is ultimately good for the economy, and to be on this list i think you have to pay your tax so we will take that. we will try to salute his 21 billion and not feel jealous! thank you try to salute his 21 billion and not feeljealous! thank you for now. that's it for the papers this hour. john and katy will be back at 11:30pm for another look.

we will see you in an hour. 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 not necessarily huge dramatic moments, or a storyline in this book. it's more about the quieter but very piercing inner 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 were no 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. recover 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 0bama'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, business 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. good evening. for most parts of the

country it has been beautiful today, a bit more cloud in the north and east, some rain in northern scotland that this was in leeds this afternoon, beautiful blue skies. through the next week we are looking at mostly dry with a continuing. still some sunshine but it cool speu still some sunshine but it cool speuin still some sunshine but it cool spell in the middle of the week. this is the satellite image showing the cloud still sitting in parts of northern and eastern scotland, stretching close to parts of east anglia and the south—east. more working in from the west overnight. for much of the country and those clear skies with light winds it will be quite chilly to start monday. in a few spots there could be a touch of grass frost. my other in parts of east anglia with the cloud drifting in from the north sea and also under the cloud in northern ireland. through the day, largely dry, a lot

of sunshine and some fair weather cloud building. it will be cool around some of the eastern coasts. the breeze coming from the north sea and the cloud pushing into parts of east anglia and into london. in the sunshine, temperatures up to 19 degrees in land, a bit cooler on the east coast. some low cloud, mist and fog around the east coast of scotland. into tuesday, this frontal system scotland. into tuesday, this frontal syste m m oves scotland. into tuesday, this frontal system moves into the north—west, bringing more cloud to parts of scotla nd bringing more cloud to parts of scotland and northern ireland and some spots of rain. england and wales keep the sunshine on tuesday, some cloud, but it will be the warmest day of the week, particularly in central and south—eastern parts of england is where we will have temperatures reaching 23 degrees. slightly cooler conditions in scotland and northern ireland late in the day, fresher behind that weather front. that will move further southward and eastward across the country through tuesday

night into wednesday. you can see the blue colour is returning things changing a bit in the middle of the week. this slightly cooler day on wednesday with the wind direction changing to a northerly increments. claudio in england and wales is that weather front moves away. still a few showers —— cloudier in england. goodbye for now. this is bbc news. i'm rachel schofield. the headlines at 11: tributes pour in for dame tessa jowell, who played a major role in securing the 2012 london olympics. she's died aged 70. in the end, what gives life meaning is not only howard has lived, but how it draws to a close. —— how it is. police in indonesia say six members of a single family, including children, were responsible for the bombings of three churches that have killed at least 13 people. injerusalem, israelis celebrate the opening of the new us

embassy while palestinians protest. and a standing ovation for kate adie as she wins this year's bafta fellowship.