that gives knox his missed. that gives knox his third european tour win. that is often sports day. with meats and hate. i will have more throughout the evening but now it is time for me the author. a guilt ridden angry boy on the loose in the western australian outback and his quest for manhood. love, perhaps even some kind of spiritual peace. and unlikely friendship with the hermit like man once a priest whose damaged also. tim winton, one of australia's great novelist tells this brutal unforgiving raw story with great passion and without a trace of sentimentality. the shepherd's hunt is told in the voice of the boy and it crackles with the rough innocence of his language, and innocence that by the end of the story has turned into something quite different.

welcome. the two principal characters in this story who carry it all our difficult people. they're both to some extent guilt ridden, both damaged. why do you expect a reader to become so involved in them and to follow them on thisjourney? involved in them and to follow them on this journey? well, that is a good question. i'm not sure i have the answer. my experience of writing the answer. my experience of writing the book was finding those characters and following them almost in the same way the reader does, and discovering what they are about. with a sense of compulsion, really. yes. i have one character who bumped into another character and it is

just happenstance in the first insta nce just happenstance in the first instance and then rewriting later on. because to make these opposites match, what do we met one is a 15—year—old borderline sociopaths, the boy, and the other is an older man, and they are both lost in their way. so of all of the gin joints man, and they are both lost in their way. so of all of the ginjoints in the world eventually... it is the nature of it. a place that seems empty. if you spend long enough and you are looking, you'll come things. it isa you are looking, you'll come things. it is a classic kind of up to any tale. it is that moment where everything changes. takes a certain form just by the chance meeting of these two characters. yeah. this boy... hiking through the wilderness, really, with nothing but a high—powered rifle, some ammunition, a backpack... and words. and a bottle of water. and just for him to meet another person... it goes from a sort of survival

story and you are inside the mind and the lexicon of this profane, angry, damaged boy, entirely until these two people meet and they hit sparks off one another and suddenly there is a different kind of language striking sparks off of the boy. and vice versa. there is a transformation of sorts which we will talk about later. but, how did you get inside the head of this angry, damaged, profane boy? because his voice has an authentic feel to it. it never flags, it is there from the beginning of the book to the end. how did you do that? it is tricky. well, i did not get into his head, he got into mine. it was... it was an inconvenient flash

of inspiration, i suppose. i was writing another book entirely, but this scene where his father is killed just arrived in my head unbidden. and actually unwelcome because i was... it was distracting. it had nothing to do with what i was right in the middle of at that day. but it was so vivid and i wanted to see where it went, literally. i tried to go back to my novel for a couple of weeks and realise that i had been derailed by this intervention and followed the hate of that voice to see where it was going. and to keep it real, it felt real to me. i knew it was a confection because i am a novelist. but it is kind of almost a sort of secondary form of experience, when it is working really well, it is as if it is real. once this journey begins, the death of the father, the flight because of what he fears might happen unjustly to him, it is a journey that you have to stick with. you have got to know how it ends. yeah, you feel...

i felt, as the author, like i had my coat caught in a pram rack on the back of the bus and just dragged along behind the bus. running sideways to keep up and, i hope that is the experience for the reader. the language helps because it is, he is a rough dime and he is an adolescent. he is not fully formed. so it is pouring out of him in a... in a rough—hewn way. yeah, it is a sort of hot torrent and it is profane and spiky and... 200 pages of bad language and poor syntax. and i got paid for that. but i think it is... it is something about the passion in his voice, the anger and the hurt and the longing that you go with that somehow, because at first blush, he is a piece of work. you would not give him a lift in your car. you would not have him in your home.

and i would not recommend having him in your head for two years as i did. you stay with them long enough, it is a little bit like standing in that landscape long enough until you get some familiarity, when you look and you see that you're looking at more than you notice, and with him, he have time enough to merge as someone we are interested in, and we're hoping for the best for. that is interesting, we hope for the best for him. that is an intriguing observation. we will not say how the book ends except that there are unexpected events at the end. what we know is that he is hunting for something, it is notjust escape. he is hunting for what he would call love of some kind. with his cousin, and he thinks this will be a relationship that would take him somewhere. that is a positive side from the beginning, it is a quest. he is learning for decency, as he called it. peace and decency.

he feels that no one has ever been decent to him except for this girl that he is walking 300 km to. she is the only person in the world who cares about him. because of the damaged man he meets is a priest or an ex—priest, there is inevitably a kind of spiritual context, not an overtly religious theme, they are not searching for god in any sort of obvious way. but there is that angle to it, that is quite a profound strand in the book, isn't it? yeah. because the, this guy, denton mcgillis, the spoiled priest, he has what the boy does not have and that is language and education. he comes from the great world. and he has a kind of conference with ideas and even if he has use them superficially most of his life, and then in bad faith, -- confidence with ideas. but he does provide a kind of role model as a way of being a man to the boy that he has not had before. a quick piece of growing up.

yeah. and alsojust, he has never discussed any ideas with anyone before. the yearning questing nature of the boy changes the man and some of the knowledge and experience changes the boy because there they are in the middle of nowhere in a great expanse of salt lakes, the greatest sky you are ever going to see in your life. you have perspective. you know, you just become dandruff on the side of the great beast of the earth. you have written before in books and novels about the power of the landscape, the power of the solitude you can find there, the nature of that place. it is clear that western australia just haunts you every hour of your life. even if you are a youth as i was when i first went out

camping and hunting in that landscape, eventually just by the nature of the differential in size and scale of it and you, you are forced... you are forced outside your comfort zone mentally and as well as physically. i want to ask you finally is this, it is the question i think anybody would begin to ask themselves as they go on this journey, and it is this, how much has he changed and in what way by the end of the book? yeah, that is the sort of central question, really. he is a different boy to the kid that we first know in the beginnings of the book and he has been through, you know, violent and profound and often comical experiences. i think he is a different person at the end of the book, whether he is different enough as a boy, so that he is, you know, our daughters and sisters and friends won't fear him,

remains to be seen. he wants to be decent. he wants peace. tim winton, author of the shephard's hut. thank you very much. oursummer our summer heat wave continues. another hot, sunny day. many parts of the country seeing temperatures above 30 degrees yet again. this is the scene taking by one of our weather watchers in st ives, they are heading to the beach. a bit cooler around the coast with sea breezes but a hot day in land. satellite shows work we have had a bit of patchy, fairweather cumulus cloud gathering up —— bubbling up with the intensity of the heat and the progress of the evening and tonight across parts of scotland into northern ireland. little marco out starting to filter down the east coast as well. a slightly cooler

fuel to the weather —— a little bit more cloud starting to filter down. down towards southern and western parts of england and wales overnight temperatures holding at around 18 celsius, another warm, sticky humid night i had. monday it is very much still high—pressure, that is driving oui’ still high—pressure, that is driving our weather but we got this weather front here which will be introducing slightly cooler conditions, so as the cold front sinks south it will not be as hot as it has been particularly for eastern scotland and the northeast of england as well, slightly cloudier and wind is coming from the north here. elsewhere still another hot, dry day to come and i think the hottest of the weather on monday will be for southern and western parts of england and into wales. the red colours on the map here, not quite as hot as it has been towards the north and northeast. temperatures typically around 18 in aberdeen, 20 in belfast, 17 in newcastle but downwards london and cardiff still looking at 28, 29, possibly 30 degrees and of course the championships continue at wimbledon. it is said to be another dry day,

conditions of it like this so there will be more cloud than we have seen recently. still spell that strong sunshine breaking through the crowd at wimbledon and top temperature is another hot day around 28 degrees or so. another hot day around 28 degrees or so. i pressure stays in charge of oui’ so. i pressure stays in charge of our weather through tuesday and on into wednesday as well, but we will be just drawing into wednesday as well, but we will bejust drawing in into wednesday as well, but we will be just drawing in a slightly cooler air, coming around that area high—pressure and spilling in from the north sea. i think through the course of the week of that of a respite if you are not a fan of a very high temperature, slightly cooler for a very high temperature, slightly coolerfor a time, cool air spinning slightly south, still lots of sunshine and mainly dry as well. 0ut of that slightly cooler in flu particularly through tuesday on into wednesday —— interlude, things will warm up again as wednesday —— interlude, things will warm up again as we wednesday —— interlude, things will warm up again as we look to the weekend. goodbye for now. this is bbc news. i'm martine croxall. the headlines at 8pm. four of the boys trapped in a flooded cave system in thailand have been rescued and taken to a local hospital. a team of divers helped

the children through a difficult part of the route. the rescue effort has been suspended until tomorrow. as borisjohnson criticises theresa may's brexit proposal, support from michael gove, who says the plans are realistic but the uk should prepare for all outcomes. if the eu is ungenerous and inflexible, then we may have to contemplate walking away without a deal. the home secretary, sajid javid, visits salisbury and says the city is open for business after the poisoning of a couple in amesbury. japan's prime minister says efforts to save people trapped after days