this is bbc news. the headlines — president trump says he's willing to meet iranian leaders without preconditions, to discuss how to improve relations between the two countries. tensions have increased since may, when mr trump pulled out of the iran nuclear deal, while the white house is preparing to re—impose sanctions. more than 50,000 people have now fled their homes in california as wildfires continue to ravage the state. at least seven people have died, including four firefighters. thousands more are working around the clock to try to battle the blazes. the worst, the carr fire, is now 20% contained, up from 5% on sunday. votes are being counted in zimbabwe's presidential and parliamentary elections. turnout was high, with long queues at some polling stations. observers say it had been a peaceful day, which might prove to be the country's first day of democracy. now on bbc news, hardtalk‘s stephen sackur speaks to the australian writer, tim winton. welcome to hardtalk, i'm 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? —— is australia redefining what it means to be a good bloke? 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, your writing, and your stories, always take you back home to western australia. why is that? i'm not sure. i think it's notjust what i know, but it's what i live and breathe, and itjust seems endlessly... there's more stories. there's 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 in a way. yeah, i think it's shaped my experience,

certainly, and it's shaped my imagination. yeah, we live in a place where there's more landscape than people, more landscape than culture. where, on the surface, it doesn't look like much is going on. but the closer you look... yeah, and if you stop, it's stopping. modern people, we're always hurtling around and you don't see anything because you're 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's 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've said in the past, you've said, you know, it is the wrong side of the wrong continent in the wrong hemisphere. you seem quite aware of how... from the great literary salons of new york and london, how it's 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're writing into a great, sort of, indifference. and the urge to leave, the urge to, sort of, pack up andjoin them was there. the pressure to do that, to leave your provincial origins and, you know, go to where the action is, it's a pretty common story. certainly in australia it was a very common story in the past generation, you know, clive james, germaine greer, bob hughes, people like that. a whole generation of successful australian authors. success was in the end rooted in london or new york or whatever by going away. yes, and i wanted to go a different way. i loved where i was from. i felt invested. i felt unable to just leave it behind for the sake of a career. i thought, well, if i'm into making art, if i'm 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's a pretty unlikely business, you get to make things that shouldn't feel real, seem real. i wanted to do that from home. and it's the mix of the imaginative and the real that so strikes me about you, because when we talk about your rootedness and your determination to write about home rather than go away, it's also about the use of language. because in the novel i've just read, your new one, the shepherd's hut, you know, it's deeply vernacular, it is so aussie it's 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 defiant about their place, about their provincial situation, and about their vernacular language. and that was, you know... i was at university for four years, but i think 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 latest book, that's sort of the attitude. i wrote down some of the phrases that i love, they're 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 his father's been violent and abusive, and he knows immediately, jack knows immediately that "the old turd was cactus," and that is a use of language which could only come from where you're from, and yet we all, who are not from there, i think in the course of it, we end up really appreciating your language. yeah, well, my experience as a reader, i'm reading these people from the south, and i didn't understand half of the words. i didn't know what was 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's about backing yourself. just saying, well, you know, i could go the conventional route and leave and go, but i'll 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 place, writing about your own no—account people. yeah, 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've done, particularly with this latest one, but i think you've done it 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 so brutal, why so many men lead deeply troubled lives and are so damaged. yeah, and, you know, you realise after a while that you're in the company very often with men who are emotional infants. they're so unschooled emotionally, they're so incurious emotionally, they're 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, 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 were on notice from them. 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's very often, you see these boys replicating the mean, nasty, violent, contemptuous ideas, or patterns of behaviour, of their father. loosely, maybe, those of us who don't know australia terribly well, would characterise and stereotype as the macho bloke culture of australia. i think it's there in all developed

cultures, it's there in all first world cultures, but it's quite prevalent in settler 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 isjust historical legacy of the settler ethos, which is to come, claim, invade, dig in, consolidate and defend. so it's a closed fist and a closed heart, a closed mind. they all seem to go together. so there's 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, as they leave childhood and go into adolescence, puberty, they're encouraged to sort of close down their own emotional side, their empathetic side.

and that's a tragedy. i mean, because it's notjust miserable for women, and makes women feel unsafe, and girls feel unsafe, and disrespected, it's bad for boys and men because they live impoverished lives. they have such diminished access to language to express strong feelings. i mean, we all have strong feelings. when you're 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, you're not allowed to show any softness, even charity is soft, "that's a little bit gay," you know, you see that in the playground. this book, as it happens, and it's coincidental, because it's five years since your last novel, so i guess it took a while write. i certainly wasn't writing this into the me too moment. it has come out and it's addressing directly what happens to boys as they become men and how they deal

with a culture which often encourages them to, as we've just discussed, close down emotionally. it's come out at a time when there is so much discussion, thanks to the me too movement, everything that's 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 a tour, which i think you headlined "tender heart, sons of brutes." so have you made a conscious decision to become, sort of, part of this discussion? 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 around the book. people were gonna see things around the book and want to talk about them. so i just figured, yeah,

maybe it's incumbent on 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, are poorer. and i guess i've been trying to appeal to the idea that, you know, women have made enormous strides in my lifetime, and that's something to celebrate. they are reaching for what's their due. they're demanding justice and they're 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 there have been a few female critics, mostly in australia, who've looked at your books, you know, extraordinarily well—received in australia, but some women have 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 quite a lot about surfers, surfing's a big deal in your life, but you've never had a lead female character who's a very active surfer, for example, you know... i had one that was a solo sailor. i've written plenty of strong characters. and i... do you reject that notion that in the end you're more about men than you are about women? no, i don't reject that. i think that's... that's not something i should have to apologise for. i'm writing about men because i know about men.

and i'm also writing about social conditions that apply in the places where i live. and the outcomes are... 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'm writing in a realist tradition, i'm writing about what actually happens in the small, redneck communities that i know so much about. this is life. to somehow add... to somehow embroider that would be insincere and inauthentic. if i was writing about the inner—city, the storylines would be different. i'm writing about places and communities, and so i'm subject to the terms of trade geographically, ecologically and culturally that apply. i mean, there are strong

women 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 thing i take from your stories, several of them, particularly the shepherd's hut, is the impassioned plea, desire to see male role models for young males, you know, for young boys. in this book, as it happens, there's a defrocked priest, who the main protagonist, the young boy, finds in the middle of these salt flats in this most remote place in western australia and this priest, fintan macgillis, he offers an enormous amount to this boy in terms of wisdom and support and guidance. did you have such a figure in your life? probably not anyone like fintan macgillis, this spoiled priest.

there were older people that i looked up to who i felt observed by, cared for by, people who were not even family members. sometimes it's about neighbourhood or people that you know... what about church, one of the key figures 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 lives, you didn't know him from before, but he offered to help... yeah, he just 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 in a coma for weeks. he came home very diminished, a diminished version of himself, but he was still too much bloke for mum to get into the bath, out of bed, and into the bath. yeah, 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, rode a bsa motorbike, very fast and gave 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 part and australian male as my father and all the other caricatures australian blokes are, but somehow there was a part of his life where he felt licensed to be gentle and tender. and a lot of that was to do with his faith? i'm sure... he was an evangelical, your parents, i know, became firm believers... as a result, yeah.

in terms of modelling for me, it was watching a man... seeing, 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 hard—bitten, really, in terms of our relations with one another. i saw there were other ways of being a 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 that 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, sort 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 weirdo to some australians? yeah, i'm sure it does. we were weirdos when we were fundamentalist evangelicals in the ‘60s after my father's accident. it does you some good to be a weirdo. you learn it's ok to swim against the current. and that your 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 outside the city and 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, inner 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 want to end by actually getting you to think a little bit about what australia means to you, because it clearly means a very great deal. you've become a very active environmental campaigner and you've given prize money from some of your fiction awards direct

to conservation efforts to reefs out in the ocean near where you've always surfed and swam. how important is that notion that you're woven into australia in a way that maybe the early australians extracted wealth from australia, they didn't really see it as their land, but you see it very much as your land? yeah, over my adult life i came to understand that i belong to it. that the country makes claims and you 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, ecological and cultural and religious wisdom from just being on that very demanding island. there's things for us to learn from our indigenous countrymen. ijust think that... you know, 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 place we're from, and that means we have privileges and responsibilities, as we would in a family or in 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're changing. whether we're changing fast enough to meet the challenges we're faced

with, in terms of global warming 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 parents felt. life happens in a strange way. you don't understand change often until retrospect. 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 cog rolls over and, you know, whoever would have thought that, you know, australians would've voted against a republic and for gay marriage inside one generation? tim winton, thank you for

joining me on hardtalk. pleasure. thanks a lot. thanks, mate. hello again. love it or loathe it, it looks like the hot weather is set to return to south—east england towards the end of the week and the weekend as well. before we get there, though, we'll showers on monday. there will be further showers around today as well. of more immediate concern is this developing area of cloud towards the south—west approaches. this is going to reactivate a weatherfront, and during the early hours of tuesday, we will see showers widespread in southern england, wales, the midlands and one or two in northern england as well, but as well as those showers, there's going to be a clump of heavier rain that will probably become quite widespread across central, southern england, the south midlands and swinging into east anglia and south—east england. the thing with this big area of rain is we will have squally winds and could have some lightning in it as well. the rain could be intense, so we could have some pretty awful conditions on the roads first thing in the east midlands, east anglia and south—east england, somewhere in that part of the world. the rain could be quite slow to ease off in the morning. by the afternoon, they will be long out of the way and we will see

sunshine following on behind. looking at the weather picture further northwards and westwards, it was always going to be a kind of cloudy and windy kind of day and there's rain in the forecast too, especially in the highlands and western isles. a few showers pushing into north—western counties of northern ireland, but otherwise, there should be a fair bit of dry and cloudy weather. temperatures, 18 in belfast. moving further south and we lose the early rain in eastern areas, that could be quite heavy and the afternoon is much brighter with some sunshine, and temperatures pushing on to around 25 degrees. it might feel a little on the humid side for you. that's tuesday's weather, let's take a look towards the middle part of the week, and we've got this warm front approaching the british isles. that's going to thicken the cloud up in northern ireland, and outbreaks of rain setting in here through wednesday afternoon, turning quite heavy as well. i think it probably will cloud over across wales and south—western england too. we'll get some rain towards the end of the day working into west scotland, but that still leaves east anglia and the south—east of england with warm air, temperatures up to 27. so pushing into the 80s

in terms of fahrenheit. showers will continue to be a feature on thursday into north—western areas, some of these could be quite heavy, and normally there's a good deal of cloud in the north—west, keeping the temperatures generally in the low 20s. not bad for the time of year, but it's the heat is really lingering in east anglia and the south—east of england as well. those temperatures build further towards the end of the week into the weekend. look at cambridge, not far from 30 here. cloudy but bright in north—western parts of the uk but towards the end of the week, some areas could reach the low 30s in the very hottest spots. that's your weather. this is the briefing. i'm sally bundock. our top story — trump diplomacy — the us president says he's ready to meet iran's leaders any time and with no preconditions. claims that north korea's building new intercontinental ballistic missiles, capable, of reaching the us, despite recent rounds of peace talks. haiti, 0xfam and beyond.

claims of widespread sexual exploitation and abuse across the aid sector. all eyes on the worlds most powerful central banks with the cost of borrowing expected to rise on both sides of the atlantic. but will they make their move this week?