in cricket, england women have won the tri—nation t20 series by beating new zealand by 7 wickets in the final at chelmsford. the white ferns won the toss and chose to bat. and they got off to a strong start — racing to 55 for no loss after five overs. but england fought back and took 8 wickets forjust 64 runs to reduce the tourists to 137 for 9 in their 20 overs. england got off to a flyer themselves, with danielle wyatt scoring a rapid half—century. and the hosts went on to win the match comfortably with 17 balls to spare, as heather knight and natalie sciver saw them home. hoping for no power cut this time but br -- hoping for no power cut this time but br —— we are back with ollie in moscow. we have sorted some technical issues. i promise not to walk off in the middle of a programme again. the

party is starting to ramp up in the middle of moscow. there was the penalty shoot out win against spain. the england players will have been watching that because the two teams are on the same half of the draw and for the england players and fans, looking that far ahead to a spain semifinal, will it be a russia semifinal. england are heading to must go for the tuesday night match, the last of the 16 ties. we can get an update from david ornstein. it was the goal that signalled england's tent at this world cup. how you doing? now comes the true test and the scorer of that scorcher thinks england will deliver. are the players aware of the magnitude? are you ready for this huge opportunity? everyone is excited. it is a great chance

for us as players. we must go out and play with no fear, play free, enjoy the occasion, enjoy the moment and get the victory. gareth southgate has described the columbia tie as england's big campaign for a decade though his players appeared to be taking it in their stride. it is going to be difficult. getting to this stage of the competition, there will be a lot of good teams. we know, with the quality we have glad that we can really hurt any opposition. for england, the aim is clear. victory the only option. the target is set but will they succeed? we have also got sweden on tuesday.

two more second round matches tomorrow. brazil v mexico is the early kick off — that's 3pm in samara. and the evening game — 7pm is rostov — is belgium—japan, these two teams are old foes and brazil have history on their side. they have picked up 53 wins against mexico. mexico only have ten victories against brazil. for mexico there is the curse of the last 16 to break. if they lose it will be the seventh successive world cup they have been knocked out in the last 16. but this is a team who began theircampaign 16. but this is a team who began their campaign with a terrific win against germany. they are one of the reasons why germany is not in the world cup last 16. one bit bad news, neymar appears to playing himself back into form. he had 119 catches against serbia, 21 more than anyone

else on the field. neymar is back and making his mark at russia 2018. he has also got a new haircut. the blonde is gone. it has reached half—time here, it is 1—1 between croatia and denmark. those teams are playing for the right to play russia, the hosts in sochi. there will be an almighty party here. shame we cannot join will be an almighty party here. shame we cannotjoin it. spain are going home. that is the big story. the hosts live to fight another day. from all of us on sportsday, it is goodbye for now. the wives of henry viii still cast a spell that neither 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 ambitious 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 no evidence that jane colluded in anne's fall. and i think that she was, largely as 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 a 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 viii, 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, at this distance in time? having studied the period for more decades that 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...| mean, i had a certain amount of sympathy for henry viii, 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 can't be overstated. no, it can't. and there's this theory that he had a fall from his horse and he banged his head, 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 counsel, 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 anne 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 seems to have picked up and i think the opening chapters are going to be quite startling. thank you for that tantalising titbit. alison weir, author ofjane seymour, the haunted queen. hello, essentially the week ahead looks drive. there will be more sunshine to come and more heat as well. earlier on we had some thunderstorms focus towards england

and south wales. it is becoming dry overnight. this band of cloud earlier bought some spots of rain into north—west scotland. the cloud bringing some fresh air to northern scotland. contrast that temperature with the much more humid feeling whether we have in the south. one or 200 showers not far away from the south coast. most of them probably in the english channel or over the near continent. a lot of dry weather and sunshine as well. fresher feeling for scotland and northern ireland. temperatures into the mid—20s at best. further south the growing heat up to 30 or 31 again. over the week ahead we are hard pushed to find any rain at all. showers in the english channel are fading away. on the whole it should feel very warm. this is bbc news.

the headlines: more than a hundred firefighters battle against a rapidly developing blaze on the moors in lancashire which fire crews say could last the rest of the week. a major incident has been declared here after strong winds caused two fires to merge near communication masts on saturday. the flames have even spread near to the grade ii listed rivington terraced gardens. an investigation is under way into how a young girl died after being thrown from a seaside inflatable in norfolk. the head of nhs england says extensive planning is under way to prepare the health service for a no—deal brexit. at the start of a crunch week for brexit, 30 conservative mps demand the prime minister takes a tough line with eu negotiators. will agree a common position later this week. i think there is no doubt

that there are strong