the world cup, it isn't thought. the world cup, it isn't unfolding as expected. though, with russia booting out spain today. —— no. so many people have gone to wimbledon hoping to see him. let's hope his brother, jamie, does well. because this is where we are incredibly good, we are the engine room of doubles playing talent in this country. very, very 9°°d doubles tennis. yes. it never gets the attention, it's never going to, the attention, it's never going to, the attention, it's never going to, the attention that the singles get. what's interesting is that you may have nadal, who knows, but i remember saying that the saddest words in english language were, come on, tim. but we have been spoiled by andy. he says he'll be back. you think how long feather has continued playing after periods when he wasn't

on the scene and then he returned. i sense we haven't heard the last of andy murray. given that the focus is on the world cup, will we be as interested in wimbledon as we have been? i will, personally. interested in wimbledon as we have been? iwill, personally. less so. the world cup is been and done as faras i'm the world cup is been and done as far as i'm concerned. not for a lot of people! a way to go. in my house. that's it for the papers this hour. but the former fleet street editor eve pollard and anne ashworth from the times will be back at 11.30 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 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 199! 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. thank you, james. we turn the heating up again today, back to 3! celsius in england and wales, with a bit more humidity. many places were dry, if not hot and sunny but not everywhere.

as expected we had this cloud which has been producing some heavy rain and even thunderstorms. the focus of that was the south—west of england where in parts of devon there was an inch of rain falling. very heavy looking cloud. then the wetter weather in parts of south wales. we've also seen showers easing off to a certain extent, one or two through being the channel, threatening to move inland. the tendency overnight is for things to come down and the showers to fade away. this cloud is moving into eastern areas of scotland. bringing some cooler air. scotland, single figure temperatures. further south, after the storms, temperatures around 17 or 18. on monday we have one or two showers, perhaps thunderstorms

close to the south coast, the isle of wight and towards the west, but staying mostly at the. very little rain in the forecast. really hotting up across england and wales where again we find those temperatures getting up to 31, even 32. behind the cloud, some fresh air for scotland and northern ireland. typical temperatures in the mid to low 20s away from the north sea coast. looking ahead into tuesday, the low pressure bringing showers, diminishing, with high pressure trying to build across the uk but it is not very dominant. it brings sufficient dry weather, so most weathers will be dry on tuesday. still a shower risk to the far south and south—west. most of the storms will be at sea or over the continent. dry and very warm and funny. still a bit more fresh over the north with high temperatures likely this week across more southern parts of the uk where it will be humid for a while.

one or two showers, initially in the south and then in scotland. most of us still dry. this is bbc news. the headlines at 11pm: emergency services fear that a huge fire on moorland in lancashire could burn for another week. more than 100 firefighters have spent the day tackling the blaze near bolton. in terms of the conditions, they are torturous, they are exhausting and they're working exceptionally hard to try and make a difference here. an investigation is underway into how a young girl died after being thrown from a seaside inflatable in norfolk. significant planning for a no deal brexit is underway in the health service, but ministers insist that's a scenario that can be avoided at the start of a crunch week for brexit, 30 conservative mps demand the prime minister takes a tough line with eu negotiators. commentator: aspas for