and their families are evacuated from the fighting in syria. israel carried out the evacuation, but the operation was the result of international cooperation. the volunteers had been trapped by a government offensive in a southern syrian border area. gunmen have killed 11 taxi drivers after opening fire in a violent ambush in south africa. the victims had been on their way back from a colleague's funeral. and this story is trending on bbc.com: the tv show, supergirl, will become the first series to feature a transgender superhero. activist and actor nicole maines, who is herself transgender, will play the role of nia nal in the next season of supergirl. that's all. stay with bbc world news. now on bbc news, hardtalk‘s stephen sackur speaks to australian writer tim winton. welcome to hardtalk, i am stephen

sackur. my guest today is an internationally acclaimed author whose prolific output of fiction is rooted deep in the soil and the shoreline of his native western australia, a land of harsh beauty where life rarely comes easy. tim winton‘s latest novel, the shepherd's hut, focuses on a troubled young man wrestling with demons, and it comes at an opportune time, with the me too movement demanding an end to ingrained sexism, misogyny and toxic masculinity. is australia redefining what it means to be a good bloke? tim winton, welcome to hardtalk.

thank you. you have travelled the world, you have even lived in europe, but it seems when you write you are writing and your stories a lwa ys you are writing and your stories always ta ke you are writing and your stories always take you back home to western australia. why is that?” always take you back home to western australia. why is that? i am not sure. i think it is notjust what i know, but it is what i live and breathe, and it just know, but it is what i live and breathe, and itjust seems endlessly... there are more stories. there is more to write about. the older i get, the more i see in it. it seems like you almost feel the landscapes, the soil and the coastline of course, because you write a great deal about the coast, it almost feels like it shapes your

soul ina it almost feels like it shapes your soul in a way. yes, i think it has shaped my experience, certainly, and it has shaped my imagination. yes, we live in a place where there is more landscape and people, and more landscape and culture where, on the surface, it doesn't look like much is going on. the closer you look... yes, and if you stop, it is stopping. modern people, we are a lwa ys stopping. modern people, we are always hurtling around and you don't see anything because you are moving all the time. if you stop and look stuff bubbles up out of what seems to be an empty and forbidding landscape and it is not what it appears. to those of us who don't live in australia, it is a pretty remote and forbidding place in parts, western australia. and you has said in the past, you have said, you know, it is the wrong side of the wrong continent in the wrong hemisphere. you seem quite aware,

from the great literary salons of europe, quite isolated.” from the great literary salons of europe, quite isolated. i was acutely aware of that as a young writer. i knew that we were just so far away, out of mind, truly out of mind. so you are writing into a great sort of indifference. and the urge to leave, the urge to sort of pack up andjoin urge to leave, the urge to sort of pack up and join them was there. the pressure to do that, to leave your provincial origins and, you know, go to where the action is, it is a pretty common story, certainly in australia it was a very common story in the past generation, you know, quite james comey germane greek, bob hughes, people like that. at whole generation of successful authors —— jermaine greer. yes, and i wanted to goa jermaine greer. yes, and i wanted to go a different way. i loved when i

was from. i felt invested. go a different way. i loved when i was from. ifelt invested. ifelt unable to just leave it behind for the sake of a career. i thought, well, if i am into making art, if i am into making stories and getting these imaginary characters to get up and stand on their hind legs and walk around the park, which is the strange mystery of art, it is a pretty unlikely business, you get to make things that shouldn't feel real, seem real. iwanted make things that shouldn't feel real, seem real. i wanted to do that from home. and it is the mix of the imaginative and the real that strikes me about you because when we talk about your rootedness and determination to write about home, rather than go away, it is also about the use of language. because in the novel i've just read, your new one, the shepherd's hut, you know, it is deeply vernacular, it is so know, it is deeply vernacular, it is so aussie it is unbelievable and you might think even for an english—speaking audience, some of it is actually quite difficult, because it is so steeped in a

particular kind of language. yeah, i guess my impulse to stay came from reading the americans, reading the americans of the deep south, twain, faulkner, flannery, o'connor, and they stayed. and they were deeply rooted. and make no apologies for it. no, they were fierce and a fight about their place, about their provincial situation, and about their vernacular language. and that was, you know that... i was at university forfour was, you know that... i was at university for four years, but i learnt more from reading those provincial american writers, who just insisted on their own terms. and if people didn't like it, well, stuff it. that, almost, without the blue language, which of course suffuses your book, that is sort of the attitude. i wrote down some of the attitude. i wrote down some of the phrases that i love, they are so deeply of this book and your place. the young character, the troubled boy in the book, early on in the

book he discovers his father's dead body and he hates his father because he was violent and abusive and he knows immediately, jack knows immediately that "the old turd was ca ctus" immediately that "the old turd was cactus" and that is a use of language which could only come from where you are from, and yet we all, who are not from there, in the course of it, we end up really appreciating your language. yes, well, my experience as a reader, i am reading these people from the south, and i didn't understand half of the word. i didn't know what was going on. you just go with the magic oi’ going on. you just go with the magic or the music of the language and you get carried on by the story. and you are not so fussed about what that means, but it sounds great, you know. and i was into the blues and jazz when i was younger. again, half of what's going on, i didn't have any idea about, but i loved the sound of it. but in the end it is about backing yourself. just saying, well, i could go the conventional

route and leave and go, but i will stay and see if i can make a stand here and see if you can write to the world on your own terms from your own, you know, to use a southern term, no account plays, writing about your own no account people. yes, andi about your own no account people. yes, and i guess what the artist does, whatever the form of art, is try to find universality in the specific and local, and what you have done, particularly with this latest one, but i think in other books too is really address what happens to boys and young men, and what it means to be a man and why so many men, and particularly in, you know, western australia that you describe, which is so harsh and brutal, why so many men lead deeply troubled lives and are so damaged. yeah, and, you know, you realise after a while that you are in the company, very often, with men who are emotional infants. they are so

unschooled emotionally, they are so in curious emotionally, they are impoverished. was there ever a time when you, tim winton, now, looking back on it, felt that you were in that way impoverished or stunted in any way? no, ifelt that way impoverished or stunted in any way? no, i felt very fortunate to grow up in a house and a family where the women were strong and you had to take notice of them, and you we re had to take notice of them, and you were on notice from the. but, you know, my father and other men that i knew were not constrained by the worst of the kind of role modelling that you see. it is very often, you see these boys replicating the mean, nasty, violent, contemptuous ideas, oi’ nasty, violent, contemptuous ideas, or patterns of behaviour of their father. loosely, maybe, those of us

who don't know australia very well, it would characterise and stereotype as the macho bloke culture of australia. i think it is there in all developed cultures, it is there in all first look all that is, but it is quite prevalent in settler cultures. —— first world cultures. you see it very vividly in parts of the states, parts of southern africa, parts of australia. you know, a little bit of it is just historical legacy of the settler ethos, which is to come, claim, invade, digging, consolidate and defend. so it is a closed fist at a closed heart, a closed mind. they all seem to go together. so there is all seem to go together. so there is a little bit of that. and the idea that you would valorise someone who is tough, strong, silent... and also the sense that boys, as they grow

up, you know, they leave childhood and go into adolescence, puberty, they are encouraged to sort of close down their own emotional side, there and pathetic sight. and that is a tragedy. i mean, because it is not just miserable for women, and makes women feel unsafe, and girls feel u nsafe, women feel unsafe, and girls feel unsafe, and disrespected, it is bad for boys and men, because they live impoverished lives. they have such diminished access to language to express strong feelings. we all have strong feelings. have you come... when you are a boy, they take away your licence to express them in certain ways. you know, you're not allowed to cry, not allowed to hold anybody‘s hand, not allowed to show anybody‘s hand, not allowed to show any softness, even charity is soft, any softness, even charity is soft, a little bit gay, you know, you see that in the playground. this book, as it happens, and it is common to dental, because it is five years since your last novel, so i guess it

took awhile write. i was not writing this into the me too moment. took awhile write. i was not writing this into the me too momentm took awhile write. i was not writing this into the me too moment. it is come out and it is addressing directly what happens to boys as they become men and how do they deal with a culture which often encourages them to, as we have just discussed, close down emotionally? it has come out at a time when there is so much discussion, thanks to the me too movement, everything that happened in the last few months about gender relationships, about women demanding different kinds of behaviours from men, and you have chosen to, sort of, in a way, embrace that political discussion by going on to work, which i think you headlined "tender cart, sons of brits. have you made a conscious decision to become a part of this discussion? -- sons of brutes. i think once we realise the cultural moment that the book was inadvertently being published into,

it felt like you had to address it. you know, it was gonna be a topic of discussion and round the book. people were going to see things around the book and want to talk about them. so ijust around the book and want to talk about them. so i just figured, around the book and want to talk about them. so ijust figured, yeah, maybe it is incumbent of me to address it head—on and to find a way to get men in particular to listen and attend to the ways in which their lives are being diminished. you know, men are the beneficiaries of patriarchy. no question. but even though they profit from it, their lives, ultimately, our poorer. and i guess i have been trying to appeal to the idea that women have made enormous strides in my lifetime, and that's something to celebrate —— are poorer. they are reaching for what's their due. and they are demanding justice and they are demanding changes behaviour and changes of

legislation, changes of outlook. and that's a terrific thing. but men haven't made equivalent strides to change themselves. but what about you as an artist, because they have been a few female critics, mostly in australia, who have looked at your books, you know, extraordinarily well received in australia, someone has said, you know, tim winton's women characters lack the agency that his male characters do, the books in the end are really about men and women are often victims, women are usually very decent and very good in your books, but stuff is happening to them, done by men, and on the most literal level, you know, you write about surfers, and surfing is a big deal in your life, but you have never had a lead female character who is a very active surfer, for example, you know...” had one that was a solo sailor. i have written plenty of strong characters. and i... do you reject that notion that in the end you are

more about men than you are about women? i don't reject that. i think that's. .. that's not women? i don't reject that. i think that's... that's not something i should have to apologise for. i am writing about men because i know about men. and i am also writing about men. and i am also writing about social conditions that apply in the places where i live. and the outcomes... the books and the storyli nes outcomes... the books and the storylines are reflective of the reality. i mean, the temptation is to write what should be, or could be, but i am writing in a realist tradition, i am writing about what actually happens. in a small, redneck community that i know so much about. this is life. to somehow add... to somehow embroider that would be in the zia and inauthentic. if i'm writing about the inner—city, the storylines would be different.

i'm writing about places and communities so i'm subject to the terms of trade are geographically, ecologically and culturally that apply. there are strong women in my stories, and lots of weak men in my stories, and lots of weak men in my stories, lots of terrible things happen to women in my stories but the worst of what happens in my stories always happens to men. one thingi stories always happens to men. one thing i take from your stories, several of them, particularly the shepherds hut, the impassioned plea, desire to see male role models for young males, for young boys. in this book, as it happens, there's a defrocked priest, the male protagonist, the young boy, finds in the middle of these salt flats in this most remote place in central australia and this priest, sinton mcgillis, he offers an awful lot to this boy in terms of wisdom and

support and guidance. did you have such a figure in your life? probably not anyone like finton mcgillis, this spoiled priest. there were older people i looked up to who i've felt observed by, cared for by, people who were not even family members. sometimes a bad neighbourhood or people that you know... neighbourhood or people that you know. . . what neighbourhood or people that you know... what about church, one figure in your life, i know from reading a lot about your family background, this extraordinary evangelical who came and helped your family when your father had a very serious traffic accident and almost died and this man entered your life, you didn't know him from before but he offered to help... he knocked on the door and my mum couldn't get dad into the bath to wash him after he'd finally got out of hospital after being ina finally got out of hospital after being in a coma for weeks. he came home very diminished, a diminished version of himself, but he was still

much bloke for man to get into the bath. hejust much bloke for man to get into the bath. he just showed much bloke for man to get into the bath. hejust showed up much bloke for man to get into the bath. he just showed up and much bloke for man to get into the bath. hejust showed up and he much bloke for man to get into the bath. he just showed up and he used to just carry my dad to the bath and sit with him and they used to talk. dad had always been a man of momentum. he was a traffic cop, road an esa motorbike, very fast and gave tickets to people who did the same! a perverse part of the job, tickets to people who did the same! a perverse part of thejob, you know! but dad was dad was always going quick. when he had his accident, he was stopped in so many ways and he said he had a lot of time to think, that he was using that time in other ways before his accident. in the company of this lovely, gentle man, you know, who was every pa rt lovely, gentle man, you know, who was every part and australian male as my father and all the other caricature was of australian blokes are, but somehow there was a part of his life where he felt licensed to be gentle and tender. a lot of that

was to do with his faith? i'm sure... he was an evangelical, your pa rents, sure... he was an evangelical, your parents, i know, became firm believers... as a result. in terms of modelling for me, it was watching a man seen, you know, a man do gentle, quiet nurturing things and for that to be honourable, for that to be worthy, and so as a little kid... this was the 1960s, we didn't come from an educated background. it was working—class. it was pretty ha rd was working—class. it was pretty hard written, really, in terms of oui’ hard written, really, in terms of our relations with one another. i saw there were other ways of being a bloke. my dad was... despite the fa ct bloke. my dad was... despite the fact he was a cop, he was also a gentle, nurturing sort of bloke. interesting you put it that way. i saw other ways to be a bloke. i guess to this day runs through your

life. you haven't, sort of, followed the conventional route in lots of different ways, not least because you've always talked about your spirituality and your acceptance of a sense of mystery in the world and being at peace with the notion that there's something out there, which, again, maybe i'm being stereotypical, but it seems to me it isn't front and centre in a lot of australian culture. that acceptance of the spiritual. no, it's a deeply irreligious culture. planted on the top of the most religious continent on the globe. does that make you a weir to some australians? i'm sure it does. we were weir is when we we re it does. we were weir is when we were fundamentalist evangelicals in the 60s after my father's accident. it does you good to be a weir. you know it's ok to swim against the current. and that you're entire

being and worth and status doesn't rely on your reputation with the mob. that was a life lesson as well. you know, it's a funny thing. australia... if you get under this incredible canopy of stars, all the kind of patina of civilisation, domestication, things that you think are important, they melt away pretty quickly and you are subject to, i don't know, grandiose thoughts, big thoughts, in whispers in a way that you wouldn't be if you stayed home. i think we get that in your writing, that degree to which you connect the natural world in all its wonder to something bigger beyond ourselves. i wa nt to something bigger beyond ourselves. i want to end by getting you to think a little bit about what australia means to you, it clearly means a very great deal and you become a

very great deal and you become a very active environmental campaigner and you've given prize money from some of yourfiction and you've given prize money from some of your fiction awards direct to conservation efforts to reefs out in the ocean where you've always surfed and swam. howell important is that notion that you're woven into australia in may a way early australians extracted well from australia, they didn't see it as their land, but you see it is very much your land? in my early life i came to understand that i belong to it. that the country makes claims and you have responsibilities to it. sorry to interrupt, it seems to me you feel a great affinity with aboriginal australians in that way? i think i've learned some things. there's 60,000 years of wisdom, technological and cultural and religious wisdom from just being on

that very demanding ireland. there's things for us to learn from our indigenous countrymen. i just things for us to learn from our indigenous countrymen. ijust think that... the old way of living, of treating the country as a product, as something to be exploited, taken from... it's about the relationship. i think we've learned we're in a relationship with the natural world and the plays were from and that means we have privileges and responsibilities, as we would in a family ora responsibilities, as we would in a family or a community. do you think australia has fundamentally changed? does australia generally get that in a way that maybe it didn't a generation ago? i think that when i was a schoolboy, we were still slaughtering whales. it's in my lifetime we've gone from being a whaling nation with a turtle fishery... it's amazing how the

country has changed in my lifetime. you know, 50 something years. i think we are changing. whether we are changing fast enough to meet the challenges we face with in terms of global warning and the state of our rivers and, as you mentioned, our reefs. i think the way my grandchildren consider their place on our island is very different to the way my grandparents and their pa rents felt. the way my grandparents and their parents felt. life happens in a strange way. you don't understand change often until retrospect. things are happening around you and changing ina things are happening around you and changing in a way... even if you're a campaigner like me, you spend half your time shouting at the television, you know? and shouting at the sky, frightening the dog because there's no change, it feels like nothing's moving. but then you get surprised. some little thing turns, some little rolls over and,

you know, whoever would have thought that, you know, australians would have voted against a republic and for gay marriage inside one generation? tim winton, thank you for joining generation? tim winton, thank you forjoining me on hardtalk. pleasure. thanks a lot. thanks. temperatures got up to 30 degrees on sunday, and the heat is going to continue over the next few days. if anything, it'll turn even hotter across parts of southern and south—eastern england. temperatures may actually even get up to 33 celsius. now, on our satellite picture, we have a few weather fronts moving through, but they're very, very weak. they're not bringing an awful lot of rainfall,

just about nudging into north—western parts of scotland and northern ireland. to the south of that, this is where the heat is, across spain, portugal, france. in fact, all of that heat through monday will be expanding right across europe, and all the way into scandinavia. incidentally, it's been a record—breaking summer, lack of rainfall there, as well, and temperatures into the 30s — very unusual. now, cooler air is trying to tap into north—western parts of the country, and actually, parts of scotland and northern ireland will be among the coolest places in europe over the next few days. but this is what it looks like first thing on monday morning. very warm — 20 degrees, that's the overnight low in london. i6, 17 degrees there for the lowlands of scotland and for belfast. so here's our very small, weak weather front here, bringing a few spots of rain. you can see itjust pretty much falls apart, bringing some rainfall to northern ireland and maybe the western isles there

during the course of monday, but that's pretty much it. to the south of that, the heat is on. temperatures widely in the high 20s, and in excess of 30 degrees there in the south—east and east anglia. so a very hot day for some of us, at least on monday, but not necessarily in the north—west of the country. and you can see through monday evening, it's a very slow—moving weather front. it'll probably stall somewhere around the irish sea as we head into tuesday. so there's a possibility of perhaps a bit more cloud, maybe one or two showers around northern england, possibly wales into tuesday, but that's pretty much it. it looks like that hot air will continue to pump in from the south and spread across france, germany, into scandinavia and poland as well. so we're just on the edge of the heat here actually. that's why it's only going to be hot across these eastern counties, the midlands and the south—east. many western areas here will be under the influence of that less hot air coming off the atlantic, but still temperatures of 20 in belfast, 20 in plymouth, and easily 30 degrees or more on tuesday. in fact, temperatures this week do get up to about 33 celsius. so a very hot week on the way,

but further north it'll be just that little bit cooler and more pleasant, with a spell of rain heading into northern ireland, i think, sometime midweek. that's it from me, goodbye. this is newsday on the bbc. i'm rico hizon in singapore. the headlines: rescuing the rescuers. more than 100 white helmet volunteers and their families are evacuated from the fighting in syria. gunmen in south africa shoot dead i! taxi drivers, who were ambushed on their way back from a funeral. i'm kasia madera in london. also in the programme: with just days to go before parliamentary elections in pakistan, many women still aren't registered and may not be allowed to vote. we speak to the female candidate trying to change that. and inside north korea, we'll hear from an american student

who gained rare access to the secretive state.