hello. this is bbc news. i'm ben bland. the headlines: the indian prime minister, narendra modi, has arrived in the southern state of kerala to see for himself the devastation caused by what's been described as the worst floods there in a century. weeks of rain have triggered landslides and floods killing more than 300 people. a state funeral for some of the victims of the genoa bridge for another five continuing. the government has begun action against the motorway management company. the former cricket international, imran khan, will be sworn in as prime minister of pakistan in a few hours time. he won last month's election on a pledge to fight corruption and to lift millions out of poverty. his opponents are continuing to claim that the voting was rigged. now on bbc news it's time for talking books. talking books. we've come here to

talk to dame hilary mantel, the only woman to have won the man booker prize fiction prize for her bestselling historical novelist wolf hall and put other bodies. her other books me take you by surprise. there we re books me take you by surprise. there were of course eagerly awaits the next instalment of her thomas cromwell trilogy, the mirror and the light. --

cromwell trilogy, the mirror and the light. —— pull up the bodies. hilary mantel, welcome to talking books. we will talk about the mirror a light ina will talk about the mirror a light in a moment. and you have written 12 novels, short stories, a memoir, and i was struck by how different they are from 800 pages on the french revolution to performing psychics in suburbia, your subjects are unpredictable. how the liberties that? is not deliberate, but i don't know how people manage to write this and book over and over again, because you grow and you change and your interests change. but to me there are subterranean threads that connect them. however desperate the subject matter they seem to believe. i wonder if payet resisting categorisation, that potentially help you build an audience early in your career? i think possibly did.

—— i wonder it if perhaps. as you say, you cannot predict when i was going to come up with next i had had good press. before wolf hall was published i hadn't pushed out my talent. wolf hall was a turning point.

notjust domestically but in translation. i wonder how attitudes changed to you after your victories? they were my first books. people would say it was wonderful i did it in my 50s. i wrote for 12 years

before i was published. that was a more typical idea but people like overnight success. these are the most written about subjects in britain. what did you think you could add to the cromwell story? if you stand where he is standing the material defamiliarises itself. it becomes different

to what we saw in our school days. you have to ask about the incredible rise. thomas cromwell, people say, is an ingenious man. do you know he has the old testament by heart? he is the man to cut through legal entanglements of generations. or to take your daughter into a reluctant marriage.

he is gentle and easy but makes your creditors weep. nobody can out talk him if he wants to talk. liz, he says to his wife one night, i believe in a year or two we'll be rich. in the novels you challenge the traditional views of the man. what did you discover to challenge that view?

he was ambitious and unscrupulous. he was ambitious and unscrupulous. he was ambitious and unscrupulous. he was hardheaded. but i think, no more so he was hardheaded. but i think, no more so than the typical courtier of his time. he was a lot smarter. so it is your view the historians got it is your view the historians got it wrong? not all of them. it is interesting sometimes, to see what a novelist gets or takes away from a simple piece of documentation that a historian may not notice. but how historically accurate do you feel you have to be? i think you have to be absolutely accurate, as far as the record extends. but of course you have to be challenging the record, and you have to be saying, who wrote this down, and what was

his source of information? so in that sense ui getting behind the record. but i think in cromwell‘s case, certainly, you have to be very suspicious of secondary sources. you see, to the elizabethans, cromwell was a hero. by the time ago to the victorians he was a villain. so something happened at some stage in between, and he is a reflection, like most historical figures, between, and he is a reflection, like most historicalfigures, the times —— of the times. we are not looking at him, we are looking in a mirror. you explain that very well. i think that is a very interesting point. how and when did you become interested in him, because you had wa nted interested in him, because you had wanted to write about him since the start of your career, haven't you? i've began work on a historical novel and i was very young, 22, not long out of university. and i really saw myself as a historical novelist, andi

saw myself as a historical novelist, and i thought, right, first i will do the french revolution and then i will turn my mind to thomas cromwell. and of course it doesn't work like that. no one's career is that smooth. and just as well, because i could write about the french revolution then, it was made by young men and women. i was younger than they were. mostly they we re younger than they were. mostly they were dead by their mid—30s. younger than they were. mostly they were dead by their mid-30s. you were 22? i was were dead by their mid-30s. you were 22? iwas in my were dead by their mid-30s. you were 22? i was in my 20s and 30s when i was working on the book. and i could recognise their spirit and their hope, and their commitment and energy. i couldn't write that book 110w. energy. i couldn't write that book now. but i can write about a man in his 50s building up and accumulating his 50s building up and accumulating his life's experience. so i think, you know, the time when you get an idea for a book, that is not necessarily be time to execute it. sometimes you have to wait a couple of decades and then pick your moment

to strike. 2003, and your memoir, giving up the ghost, in which you write about your childhood, growing up in the 19 feet is in northern england, but you also explain how you came to be a writer. —— growing up in the 1990s. that was not your original plan, you are going to be a politician and a lawyer. what happened? yes, under ambitious. i think... lawyer. what happened? yes, under ambitious. ithink... it lawyer. what happened? yes, under ambitious. i think... it is difficult, you know? a woman from a working—class background with no connections trying to get into at that time, i wasn't even interested in being a solicitor, i wanted to be a barrister. i wanted to come to london and the centre of things. it was difficult in those days. but also i had health problems. i had an

undiagnosed illness. buti also i had health problems. i had an undiagnosed illness. but i was told that i was imagining it all. but by the time i was 21, really had a sensation of doors closing on me. and a feeling that i was not going to be able to make their professional career, that my health was in my way, and so i thought, well, i better have something that i am in charge of. and they still had to work, of course. i still had a job, but i started working on weekends, and i set my load very big novel that i knew would take many yea rs. novel that i knew would take many years. but that is the beauty of being 22, because the thai stretches ahead of you. and i still had no connections, and they did not know anybody who was a writer. but what you need is a piece of paper and a pencil and you are ready to go. so

you tell me that if you had not been ill, you would not have become a writer? i would not have taken the decision at that time. i think possibly i would have made way way back to writing when i was living abroad, during which time i didn't have any meaningful career, so i think they would have come back to writing at a later stage. but that would not have been the sambrook, because it would have been a different cell. yes. and of course you drew on your experiences in botswa na you drew on your experiences in botswana and saudi arabia in novels that you did right. -- self. that is right. they change of climate. i wrote about southern africa, although at an earlier era, i wrote about it in the 1950s. that was a historical novel of a kind. and then i wrote eight months and carson street, reflecting on my four years

there. we had touched upon your illness, and as you said, it was undiagnosed for many years, and eventually you are diagnosed with endometrial stairs. that rendered you infertile. iwas endometrial stairs. that rendered you infertile. i was struck by a lying in giving up the ghost. you said you miss the chardy never had, what is to be done the right into being? is a 30 seat you have your children in your fiction?” being? is a 30 seat you have your children in your fiction? i accreted lives. —— the child you never had. you realise that you only have one life to live and you want to try on for size all the other lives, and you want to move into different areas and to live in the man's body for a while. and all the things that writing enables you to do. you

mention the french revolution to this epic 800 page novel which was pioneered published, a place of greater safety, although it was previously rejected by publishers, that must be difficult, was it? previously rejected by publishers, that must be difficult, was mm seems that somebody who would write such a book must be someone of tremendous authority, someone we had heard of from oxford or cambridge. and it was just little heard of from oxford or cambridge. and it wasjust little me. i don't think people could get their heads around it. they didn't know what it was. and thankfully, what i did, instead of turning around that the publisher in london with it, ijust said, stop, go away, write another book, do the best you can but make it completely different. which was

every day is mother's day. yes, a contemporary novel, short, funny. if that didn't work, i would have thought i was deluded myself and stopped. but fortunately it did take. so the first decade, 12 years of my writing, was a very rocky. my morale sank sometimes. i needed a lot of self belief to keep going. but once every day is mother's day it's the right desk, and that was the desk of the literary agent who still looks after me, everything went swimmingly. comparatively. yes. and finally, a place of greater safety was published. it was, and it w011 safety was published. it was, and it won the sunday express book of the year prize. and ifelt won the sunday express book of the year prize. and i felt vindicated, innocence. i mean, you started a huge epic about the french revolution. where does one start? well, manchester was my only choice.

between the central reference librarian the university. there was a very good collection of material andi a very good collection of material and i simply read everything i could get my hands on. i was short on primary sources, but what i got were armfuls of gossipy victorian biographies. victorian era biographies. victorian era biographies. which provide all the colour, the anecdotes, the personalities, and i'd built up from there. by seeing the binders and folders of research notes that you have, labelled people, places, customs, manners, at what point as a writer do you say, i've done enough research now. i need to start writing. well, to me, the two things are in twine. you know... you start

them together, you run them together, and then until you come into a particular scene you may not know what you need to know. 0r into a particular scene you may not know what you need to know. or it may be that some little piece of information that comes your way, and it need not be information, you might seea it need not be information, you might see a picture or hear some music, starts you off on a new trail. could you think, right, this is the background music to the scene. i will write the song and we will sing it and change the mood, you know? and you start to describe your event through describing a painting, and it cuts through the complexities. and so you are always looking, not just for complexities. and so you are always looking, notjust for information from the historical record, but for a cultural context that will help you frame a scene. and i think that never stops. then, a little later, came another

com pletely then, a little later, came another completely different novel, beyond black. you mentioned at the beginning there are things you return to in your books, and this theme of the supernatural is one of those. so where did this interest in a world beyond ours come from? probably from being brought up as a roman catholic. you are quite convinced that there is another run seen convinced that there is another run seen reality that is more potent than this one. —— unseen reality. and that this world is actually an illusion, something in which we are transitory, and it doesn't really matter. what really matters is the world where the dead people laugh. and that was partly true to me as a small child. i think i lost sense of

it as small child. i think i lost sense of itasi small child. i think i lost sense of it as i grew up. and moved away from the church. but that sense of another reality, sitting on your shoulder where your guardian angel is supposed to be, that is very powerful in my life. i really feel that the dead are only a whisper away. do you believe in ghosts? i don't know about ghosts. i have to believe in ghosts. beyond black, which is a contemporary novel, and ta kes pla ce which is a contemporary novel, and takes place mostly within the m25, is actually a kind of workup for the later novels, because it is all about the dead who won't lie down. the dead are on every page of that book, nattering away about all sorts of adult topics. and the whole theme

of adult topics. and the whole theme of talking to the dead and being available to them, i was actually setting the schedule for my next 15 yea rs of setting the schedule for my next 15 years of work and stop but i didn't know it at the time. which brings us neatly to the mirror and the light, the eagerly anticipated final instalment in your thomas cromwell trilogy. so how was it going?m instalment in your thomas cromwell trilogy. so how was it going? it is going well. it has just suddenly taken a leap forward, and just last week i could email my editor and say, since i emailed you last week, i have done 12,000 words, and they are good words. 12,000 words is nothing, but you suddenly inc, now, this project, it is pulling away from its moorings, you know? it really wa nts from its moorings, you know? it really wants to be written. and i think i am probably entering into the most frenzied but also, in a

way, the most pleasurable days of the rioting, where it seems to have taken charge and it is doing it itself. can you envisage a writing life aeons thomas cromwell now? there is so much i want to do. and not just there is so much i want to do. and notjust in there is so much i want to do. and not just in prose there is so much i want to do. and notjust in prose but maybe in the theatre as well. and it is just a question of how much stamina have i got, what time have i got left? each project ta kes got, what time have i got left? each project takes years to realise. so i have to have a long think. i have ideas for two or three more novels, andi ideas for two or three more novels, and i am going to have to make some ha rd and i am going to have to make some hard choices, i inc. hillary mantell, thank you so much. hello there. this weekend, again, we look to the atlantic to see where our weather is coming from. we're going to add into the mix, just for good measure, the remnants of an old tropical storm. it will feel quite humid out there this weekend.

for many it will be dry on saturday, more rain for some on sunday. there was a fair bit of dull, damp, cool and wet weather across some parts of the country on friday. a lot of that has moved through. this area of low pressure, though, contains remnants of tropical storm ernesto, to arrive in the second half of the weekend. still got some rain on that weather front there, though. that is strung out across central and southern scotland, the north of northern ireland, perhaps the north—west of england too. south of that, though, we're going to find it probably dry, sunshine at times, the best of which is likely to be in the south—east. temperatures likely to hit the mid—20s or so. north of our band of cloud, patchy, light rain and drizzle. northern scotland, after a windy start, should be dry with some sunshine. here comes ernesto, though. don't have to worry about the strength of the winds. it's more the rain. it'll be quite heavy

for a while as it moves over the irish sea, into southern scotland, northern ireland and wales. 0vernight, once again those temperatures no lower than 17 degrees, but across some areas, some heavy rains on sunday — central and southern scotland, northern england and wales. as the rain makes its way eastwards into the midlands, it becomes lighter, temperatures into the mid—20s. improvements in the weather in northern ireland. slightly cooler, fresher, but still cool weather in the far north of scotland, with some sunshine. so we see the remnants of tropical storm ernesto bringing a spell of rain during the second half of the weekend. it moves away into southern parts of scandinavia by monday, and things calm down just a little. a very flat ridge of high pressure, still a lot of cloud coming in from the atlantic, and developing through the day. the odd shower perhaps up towards the west. patchy light rain and drizzle in the north and west of the uk, but 21 degrees likely in belfast, and 25 or 26 in london and the south—east. that's our monday. as we look further ahead,

we still have higher pressure across the south. it's not a dominant high, by any means, and a string of fronts arriving in the north—west, but very late on in the day on tuesday. ahead of that, increasing cloud perhaps, but some sunshine for a while, and the odd shower in scotland and for northern ireland and england. a dry day, a bit more sunshine around as well, and those temperatures more widely into the mid—20s across east anglia and the south—east. the number is not changing too much for scotland and northern ireland. this is bbc news. i'm ben bland. our top stories: devastating floods kill more than 300 people in the indian state of kerala. prime minister modi makes an emergency visit. funeral preparations for victims of the genoa bridge collapse. the search goes on for five people still missing. in just a few hours, pakistan's former cricket captain, imran khan, will be sworn in as the country's new prime minister. and we talk to a woman held as sex slave by the islamic state group who came face to face with her former captor in germany.