there and achieved virtually nothing. it could well be that some might prince william might achieve more. it could also be that he is tying his flag to the mast on a very difficult issue that he may never be able to... maybe not, but there are people who will welcome this hugely, the fact he has very publicly recognised and spoken and been moved by the plight of the palestinians, thatis by the plight of the palestinians, that is huge. business thing -- business thing wrong with try, and if he wants to follow in the footsteps of princess diana, this is the kind of thing he should go for —— there is nothing wrong with trying. and now to the independent, how much are you following the world cup? nigel, you know it is the world cup. yes, i do. the independent has photographs here, leo messi boughs

out of the world cup after france beat argentina. eliminating them from the tournament. the world cup is very exciting. it is exciting for football fa ns is very exciting. it is exciting for football fans because not only do you get to see the best players in the world, it is like the fa cup used to be. where the minnows have got as much chance, and it has a lwa ys got as much chance, and it has always been, we go into the world cup and it is either going to be brazil or germany or argentina, and so brazil or germany or argentina, and so far argentina and portugal and germany are out, so it becomes much more exciting and much more interesting. yes, ronaldo is out. yes, he was looking dejected but stern jawed as always. and leo messi, these are two of the most

iconic and brilliant players in the world. it is one of those things. bring on harry kane, i save the you will be watching the next england game? yes, i do watch the end and games. i was going to bring in some gingerbread men from my local baker because they have harry kane gingerbread men. this is a picture of france. that is right. the 19—year—old for france who scored the second goal and he knocked out argentina. amazing. thank you both very much. that's it for the papers this hour. nigel nelson and jo phillips will be back at 1130pm for another look at the papers. next on bbc news it's meet the author. the wives of henry viii still cast

a spell that never seems to break. jane seymour, the haunted queen continues alison weir's series of novels, with the story of the third of his queens, marrying henry after the execution of anne boleyn and giving him the only son he ever had — a birth that brought about her own death. this is fiction from a historian who moves easily from the politics and state craft of the tudor era to the inner lives of characters which she can only imagine. welcome. everyone thinks they know quite a bit about all the six wives but jane seymour — and it springs very much out from the pages of this book — is somebody about whom we know surprisingly little, even now,

after all the attention. that is absolutely true. and there are two views of jane seymour — was she the meek and willing tool of an ambition family and an ardent and powerful king or was she as ambitious as her brothers and did she conspire to bring down the queen she served? how would you describe the conclusion that you come to in the course of these pages? a novelist has to come down for one view or the other and i went through the sources forensically looking for clues as to her character and there is no evidence, apart from her saying she would denigrate anne boleyn a few weeks before anne's fall, there's no evidence that jane colluded in anne's fall. and i think that she was, largely she comes across, she was a woman of principles. she had moral courage. she was devout, she was gentle, she was kind, she was also submissive. indeed, and she put up with so much and died giving

henry his only male child. she did, indeed. and though the marriage seems to have been happy. i am in no doubt that henry genuinely loved her. it's interesting that you talk about the sources because you are an historian of distinction, you are also writing fiction here. the third of your novels on the wives — obviously three more to come! do you go back to original sources for the fiction as well as for the history? yes, i do. in fact this series of novels was born out of new research i was doing. in 1991, i published a book, six wives of henry vii, and i have been updating and revising, basically re—researching and rewriting that. it is a long project. how would you describe the changes in scholarship that have come about, the new things that we know from recent scholarship? i mean, a lot of work has been done on henry viii's court. we understand far more on how the court was structured and how it

functioned and that has a bearing on the lives on the individuals who inhabit it. but also a lot of research has been done, minute research — i have done it myself — on anne boleyn's fall, for example, and on her sister, mary boleyn... who set her up...that sort of thing. yes, that kind of thing. but also in the detail, you can tell a different story now because we know so much more. so back to jane seymour. number three. how much did we know before and how much have you had to create from your own imagination the character that you believe is accurate? as i said, i inferred her character from what i could, from the sources but i had to create a lot for her early life. i used the skeleton framework of fact we have — we have a fragment here and a fragment there — and sort of looking retrospectively from what came later, to create her early life, because these books are about whole lives, they're not just about their periods of queenship and they are all written each from each queen's point of view,

solely from that point of view. it's a fairly obvious question but an important one, i think — how do you go about trying to create the conversation that somebody like jane seymour would have? you know, her style of speech, her habits, the way she would move, the whole business of social interaction, this distance in time? having studied the period for more decades than i care to remember, i'm a little bit familiar with social idioms and that kind of thing, and language... itjust comes, it's like learning a foreign language. but you also put yourself inside that person's head and that is the difference between writing fiction and writing history. how easy or difficult is it to move between the two? you have talked about the way that historical sources are important to yourfiction, just as they are obviously the foundation of the historical writing, but you have to change your whole perspective when you're writing fiction because, as you say, you are getting inside her head. which is not a legitimate way for a historian to operate. exactly.

it was more difficult actually converting from writing non—fiction to fiction because, when i submitted my first text, my agent said this is a riveting story but it's faction and you've got to come off the fence and stop being a historian and start being a novelist. and what did that make you do? it made me go back to square one and realise i needed learn my craft from the beginning. i thought i knew all there was to know about...well, you know, you publish a few books... but you learn with every book, anyway. but even so, i had to learn to show rather than tell so that the reader experiences what is happening, they can have a mental picture of what is happening, rather than just using facts where they occur, and using credible inference. well, it has to spring from character rather than from the sources. it does, it does. so you work really hard on character. when i've actually written the first draft of a novel, i will go back and work on the character threads, right the way through, so they are consistent and so these characters live more vividly. something else that is intriguing and it's this, having worked on the period historically for so long and now having spent

a lot of time writing fiction set in the period, how has your view of henry himself evolved? it's... i mean, i had a certain amount of sympathy for henry vii, and that's not to say he was not a monster in some respects. but he did not have the son he needed and that governed many of his later actions and a lot of his life was overshadowed by frustration. and at that time the importance of that cannot be overstated. no, it cannot. and there's this theory that he had a fall from his horse and he banged his head and changed character. no, he didn't. he was not out cold for two hours, it is a very poor source, but you can see this gradual deterioration in character, the frustration having its effects, from when he starts in the mid 1530s to execute his opponents, before that it's all bluster. you describe, for example, episodes where he is furious with jane seymour for what he claims is her interference in politics,

with respect to the monasteries and so on, but then he switches very quickly to being a tender husband, really, despite everything. he does. by then, the king has become supreme head of the church, he believes almost in his own divinity — he's a sanctified king anyway, he's set apart from ordinary mortals. so whenjane questions his policies, he is going to lash out verbally at her but as soon as she's back in her place, he can be the tender, adoring husband again which, according to the record, he is for the rest of the time. it is a tragic story, isn't it? not simply because of her death as a consequence of giving birth to his only male child, but we know what happens — this boy becomes king at age whatever it is... nine. reigns through a regency, through a council, for, what?

five or six years? yes. and it is the beginning of a period of extraordinary instability... it is. ..and we get that flavour throughout this volume. yes, the period is full of this kind of element that no one quite knows what is going to happen next but there are so many sweeping changes in the country. religious changes and under edward, of course, england turned officially protestant, which henry had avoided. just give us a flavour of the next volume, because jane seymour is dead at the end of this story. and then you have a gap, just over two years. and then henry marries anna of cleves and i think you might be surprised at what is going to be in that book because there is a thread of research that nobody has seemed to have picked up and i think the opening chapters are going to be quite startling. thank you for that tantalising tit bit. alison weir, author ofjane seymour, the haunted queen. thank you, james. we didn't quite make it six days

in a row with 30 degree heat, but we weren't far away and for most parts of the uk, it was another day with lots of strong sunshine and hardly a cloud in the sky. for tomorrow, there may be a bit more cloud in a few areas. for many of us, it will still be hot and sunny but there is the chance of catching one or two showers and maybe some thunderstorms. the main chance of catching those comes from this area of cloud around a slowly rotating area of low pressure that is pushing that cloud towards the north—west of the uk. there is more humidity for southern parts of the uk, with the wind more from the south—east this time. at the moment, very little wind around at all. we will see some short—lived mist and low cloud patches developing, mainly across central scotland and north—east england. at the same time, we have this band

of clouds threatening to bring a bit of rain towards the far north—west of scotland, but for large parts of the uk, sunday will be another dry and sunny day. temperatures across scotland and northern ireland are typically into the mid—20s. england and wales, high 20s, possibly 30, 31, in england and wales, high 20s, possibly 30,31, in london and to the north of london. let's focus on the showers, because they threaten to bring some heavy and thundery downpours, but they will be very hit and miss. later in the day, we could see showers heading towards parts of sussex and surrey, but the greatest threat is more towards the south—west. that remains the case overnight as we head into monday. any remaining showers will fade away, drifting towards the south—west. again, lots of dry weather and sunshine around, hardly a cloud in the sky. the threat of showers continues to clip the far south—west of england and the channel islands, but the detail is proving elusive.

as we look ahead to the first week ofjuly, we will find little change in the weather. it should be dry and sunny for most, with still the chance of one or two storms. this is bbc news. the headlines at 11:00: four young men have died and a teenage girl is left critically ill after a collision involving a car and a taxi in leeds. i think it is fair to say that it was absolutely devastating. a really significant impact. plans for fewer patients in england to be given nhs treatment for a range of conditions, including tonsils removal and breast reduction.

tata steel, which owns the port talbot plant, has confirmed merger plans with germany's thyssenkrupp. tens of thousands protest across the united states over president trump's hardline immigration policies.