has it really been can get to stake. has it really been that long? timers on. it is very strange. yes, you're right. they have finally got perin theory. i feel it is quite nice that they done something so, in theory, unified, certainly in public, this near to the cliff we are about to jump off. i see that as i remain supporter because if they had done it earlier they would have been more time for dissent, more grumblings, more machinations and leadership challenges and talks, and perhaps we do need, as everyjournalist in the i’ooiti do need, as everyjournalist in the room would agree, nothing focuses the mind like a deadline. the daily telegraph has more of that dissent. i will vote down the brexit plan. jacob rees—mogg is not giving up. he knows he has support in the country for a hard brexit. knows he has support in the country fora hard brexit. if knows he has support in the country for a hard brexit. if people do not get that they will not feel they have got a project mike tull. i

disagree with him profoundly, but he has stood by his ideology. —— have got a brexit. people put politics before the country in various ways. at least jacob rees—mogg gets points for standing strong. that is because jacob rees—mogg is not in government and no one has asked him to be a minister. it was not long ago he was being tipped as leadership contender. by people who do not know what they're talking about. there is not a majority of tory mps who think the solution to the problem is jacob rees—mogg the hard brexit that will hurt the economy and open the door toa hurt the economy and open the door to a labour government. we talked about two years, is jacob rees—mogg is not going to vote for the prime minister, what is his plan? what is their plan apart from no deal and crashing out and hurting the economy. this is the thing that tory mps and the cabinet have coalesced

on. he has gone into the meetings as a hard brexiteer, back when you see their options in front of you, even michael gove and boris johnson their options in front of you, even michael gove and borisjohnson have come to collective cabinet responsibility and back the prime minister. if they want to speak out against her now, they will need to resign. jacob rees—mogg talks about how he is going to vote down the brexit plan. parliament has no say in the negotiating process. i do not know which he thinks he will vote against, unless it is the withdrawal agreement. if he is working against that, he is frustrating brexit. agreement. if he is working against that, he is frustrating brexitlj love it when tony's banned a result. flashing eyes and flared nostrils. it is quite scary but you do not see it because he is out of vision when he does it. it is something to behold. we will behold it again in one hour when we have another look at the front pages of the newspapers. we may have more and some graphics by then. do not leave

me here on my own. next, meet 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. an unlikely friendship with a hermit—like man, once a priest and who is damaged as well. and tim winton, one of australia's great novelists, tells this brutal, unforgiving, raw story with great passion and without a trace of sentimentality. the shepherd's hut is told in the voice of the boy, jaxie clacton, and it crackles with the rough innocence of his language, an 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,

are difficult people. they are both to some extent guilt—ridden and damaged. why do you expect a reader to become so involved in them and to follow them on thisjourney? it is a good question. i am not sure i have the answer. my experience of writing the book was finding those characters and following them in almost the same way as the reader does, and discovering what they are about. with a sense of compulsion, really, on your part? yeah. so they... i have one character and follow him until he bumps into another character. and it is... it is just happenstance in the first instance and then, you know, rewriting later on, because just to make these opposites match, one is a 15—year—old, borderline sociopath, a boy,

and the other is an older man and they are both lost in their way. so of all the gin joints in all the world, you know, eventually, but it is the nature of it. a place that seems empty, if you spend long enough in it and you are looking, you will come across things. a classic kind of hook on which to hang a tale, isn't it? that moment, where everything changes and it 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. yeah, 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 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.

you wanted to be doing something else. yeah, it had nothing to do with what i was right in the middle of at that moment, that day. but it was so vivid and i wanted to see where it went, eventually. i tried to go back to my novel for a couple of weeks and realised that i had been derailed by this intervention and followed the heat 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. indeed. 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, feeling compelled. the language helps because it is, he is a rough diamond. 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... as it would be. it's 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 him 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 has time enough to emerge 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, lee, and he thinks this will be a relationship that would take him somewhere. there is a positive side from the beginning, it is a quest. he is yearning for decency, as he calls it. peace and decency. he feels that no one has ever been decent to him except this girl that he is walking 300 kilometres to. she is the only person in the world who cares about him. because of the damaged man he meets, who 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 this guy, fintan macgillis, 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 confidence with ideas and even if he has used them superficially most of his life, and in bad faith. 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 also just, he has never discussed any ideas with anyone before. the yearning, questing nature of the boy changes the man.

indeed. and some of the knowledge and experience changes the boy so that yeah, there is... they are in the middle of nowhere, as you say, in a great expanse of salt lakes, under the greatest sky you are ever going to see in your life. you have perspective. you know, you become dandruff on the side of the great beast of the earth. you have written before in books, in your 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 callow 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 as well as physically. i want to ask you finally, it is the question i think anybody would begin to ask themselves as they go on this journey with jaxie, 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. yes, 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 shepherd's hut, thank you very much. thanks, james. the weekend has brought more of the same, a lot of warm sunshine and most parts of the country have been dry. staying with that this evening, overnight and through much of the week. things turning cooler in the north—east where we draw in more cloud. still hot and muggy, especially the further south you are. 18 is the low across england and wales. a humid start on monday, dry with sunshine. more cloud than recently. the breeze is starting to come in from a northerly direction, especially across the northern part of the country it may not be as hot as it has been. 17 in newcastle, 28, 29 in cardiff.

after a cooler interlude in the middle of the week it will turn hot and stay dry towards the weekend. this is bbc news. the headlines at 11:00pm: a murder inquiry is launched after a woman in wiltshire exposed to the nerve agent novichok dies. prime minister theresa may says she is appalled and shocked by the death. four of the boys trapped in a flooded cave system in thailand have been rescued and taken to hospital. the mission to save the remaining eight and their coach continues tomorrow. support from michael gove for theresa may's brexit proposal. he says the plans are a realistic compromise, but the uk should prepare for all outcomes. if the eu is ungenerous and inflexible, then we