let's catch up now with all the weather news. it turned into a pretty warm day for some of us. but sunshine did vary. a different story overhead in county antrim. you can see that extra cloud that affected many western areas through the day, breaking up a little bit. but this cloud is introducing ring into the far north—west of the country, pushing into northern ireland and the western pa rt of into northern ireland and the western part of scotland. it sinks down as the night wears on. underneath the cloud it will turn into a pretty mild night, but in the south—east ahead of the frontal system, the odd missed patch and it will be a cool night. chilly conditions in scotland and northern ireland as the skies clear out. the weather front is still sitting in place tomorrow. you can see a little band as it runs along the front, it

is likely to pep up the rainfall for a time. the front separates cooler air in the north—west from warmer air in the north—west from warmer air in the south east. tomorrow in the south—east temperatures into the mid—20s. then the weather frontjust coming into eastern and southern scotla nd coming into eastern and southern scotland and affecting northern england with heavy rain for a time. to the north—west some sunny spells, but temperatures will struggle. 17-19, but but temperatures will struggle. 17—19, but in the south—east in the mid—20s. on tuesday still this band of cloud and the odd bit of showery rain at times. just 21 in the south east and mid—to high teens in north—western areas. on wednesday a similar date with mist and fog patches clearing to leave sunny spells. however, later in the day rain pushes into northern ireland and western scotland and this brings complications in the forecast for the end of the week. it looks like

this weather system will spin around into an area of low pressure. there is uncertainty about where exactly this area will end up, but it looks like the more unsettled end to the week. through the next few days, turning cooler, often dry at first, but later in the week there is a chance of rain. hello, this is bbc news. the headlines: theresa may dismisses calls for a second eu referendum, and insists she won't make compromises on her brexit chequers plan that aren't in the national interest. the former prime minister, gordon brown, has said the "soul" of the labour party is at stake in the dispute about the party's attitude tojews. prison corruption — the number of prison staff caught smuggling drugs, weapons and mobile phones into jails is rising steeply. the united states says

it is cancelling $300 million of military aid to pakistan. the pentagon has criticised the country for failing to deal with militant groups. now on bbc news — talking books. hello and welcome to talking books from the edinburgh international book festival with me, kirsty wark. ten years on from the election of barack obama, what progress does author and academic t geronimojohnson think america has made in the realms of race relations? he says too many of us have stood idly by while america is being run roughshod by conservative racists. in his breakthrough novel, welcome to braggsville,

t geronimojohnson details the life of a young white boy from braggsville, georgia, who wins a place at the prestigious berkeley university in california. the novel explores the complexities of race, identity and class, be it in the liberal elite in berkeley or in the traditions of the deep south. applause. t geronimojohnson, a very warm welcome to talking books. thank you. you have been compared to some extremely fine authors — mark twain, toni morrison, tom wolfe — and i wonder if that's because you have got the capacity to put a magnifying glass up to american life, with all its foibles, and chronicle it in a very acute way, but also a way that makes us laugh, too. right, i think that may definitely have something to do with it, that's definitely what moves me about a few of the writers that were mentioned there.

but it's always felt to me necessary to try to have a breadth of emotional experiences in a novel, otherwise, it can get too heavy. and if it's too heavy all the way through, considering some of the topics i'm dealing with, i don't know that that leaves the reader in a good position to really, like, face forward and think about how we can move on from where we are right now. i think the thing is, as well, what you do is you come at it from all angles, so every race, every variation, every ethnicity, gets it with both barrels and it also has some love directed towards it. right, right. and your most recent book is welcome to braggsville but before we delve into that kind of roller—coaster, rumbustious novel, i want to begin with your first novel, hold it ‘til it hurts, and this is a deeply affecting, tender novel. at its heart are two young men, achilles and troy, who are adopted. they are not brothers — they are not blood brothers — but they're adopted sons of a white

couple, and they are afghanistan vets — or you would call it in the book "goddamnistan vets". goddamnistan vets, yes. they take two tours together and much of the action takes place in new orleans, your home town. before we talk about the really big issues that you face, i also want to talk about the family dynamics in this particular relationship. here we have two young black men, adopted by i would say a lower—middle—class white family, traditional five acres that they have. yes. tell me how you alighted on that family dynamic. i wanted to put together a cast of people who were trying to do their best for each other but didn't necessarily know how. and so, this is what ends up happening with achilles‘ parents, who don't really know how to prepare him for what he will face when he leaves his small home town where everybody knows him and he becomes just this anonymous black kid walking down the street

which is, in much of american society, a symbol for danger, right? like, people are worried as soon as they see this. and then also, with — you know, between the two brothers, with all of the tension and competitiveness that can arise between siblings, you mix in this notion of masculinity, you send them off to war and they come back, and achilles really wants to do what's best but he doesn't know how because he's following too many different rules. and so, this is part of what i was thinking at the beginning. but it's a very — it's a very tender dynamic between the mother and the sons, particularly, because what happens is, you know, sending or — well, both boys sign up — well, troy signs up, so achilles better go, and achilles is the son that you'd all want to have and troy is a bit more wayward. right. and it's about loyalty and it's also, to me, it seems very much about nature versus nurture. it's certainly about this — this conflict between from where do you draw who you are, right?

is it — is it your genetics or is it your environment within which you've been raised, you know? and the funny thing for them, though, is because they end up going off to war at a very young age and have this extremely traumatic and concentrated experience, we know that whatever nurturing they've had, and whatever nature they brought into it, are both changed somewhat by this, like, 18 months of basically been charged with killing people. this is essentially theirjob when they're deployed. and i wonder on — just to digress a bit — to talk about afghanistan, because when you were writing this book, or ahead of writing this book, you knew a lot of people that has been in the military. yes, yes. and it's very obvious that you'd actually thought and talked to people about ptsd particularly. yes. at the time, at least in america, there was no discussion about how to help these young men re—enter society. so they've spent a number of months

literally being under fire, being afraid for their lives, and then actually going through the changes that you go through when you become acclimated to being afraid for your life, right? when you become accustomed to people shooting at you every day. so then you go home but your triggers are still there, right? and you still have all of this — all of this emotional vortex that's kind of carrying you along. and so, i really wanted to explore that in the novel, because itjust — no—one was talking about it at the time and it seemed a shame. and it resonated also with vietnam and korea as well. right, of course, right. and you know, you always imagine that after something as traumatic as vietnam when people came back and people didn't know how to deal with vets from vietnam, that we would be in a better place. right. well, you know, i think that a lot of the philosophy around reintegrating after vietnam or korea or even world war i was just be silent.

right? simply, you don't talk about it. this is also a part of the code of masculinity, right? so you don't talk about what's bothering you. you basically don't talk about anything. which is why i would say that most men probably — not probably — like, die of masculinity, to the extent that we die of, like, heart disease or stress—related conditions. and so, i was — i was also thinking in the novel about what it means to be a young man who has been given the ultimate responsibility and the ultimate duty and then have that licence removed and kind of find yourself, like, basically a warrior in peacetime, right? and a warrior in peacetime, and also a warrior in peacetime who is also an african—american and comes back, but then he goes to new orleans and faces black—on—black violence. we have this black—on—black violence kind of weighing against, or counterbalancing, achilles‘ experiences of being in afghanistan, when,

actually, this is the first time he's been around a lot of people who look like like him, and he is supposed to shoot them. right, so that ended up, i think, allowing me to create kind of a richer — a richer story, in a way, yeah. and also, when you look at the domestic lives and achilles returns — and he always remembers that he's come back from afghanistan, and there's no doubt that his mother was warning him away from his one—time, two—time, three—time girlfriend, because she was considered white trash. right. his parents wanted him to date someone of higher standing than janice. you have this notion of class and race, what might be white trash, being juxtaposed against the, like, slow and steady work of love. you do that in another character in the book, ines, who is a young — well, she isn't actually african—american but she can,

as it were, "pass". yes, she can. and you're very funny about her because one of the great things you do is you absolutely burst the bubble of the gap year — or the "gap yar", as it is called here — but she has actually gone and done her time in afghanistan as well, but he still thinks that she's a bit snooty. he does. you know, he thinks that she is snooty and also, oddly enough, he is more attracted to her because he doesn't know that she's black, right? so that kind of sets them up to have a reckoning and reconciliation that changes how they both look at themselves in the world. yes, which is what you do in both novels, which is undercut what we think, and i think you do that so well because what happens is you've this incredibly energetic, vibrant page of writing, but at the end, you've got to go "stop" and go "well, i've just got to think about that for a minute." which brings me on to actually how you — literally — how you write, because you are a professor of creative writing,

you do lots of different things. and you participate in different writers‘ programmes, you say that you are a serial monogamist — when you do one project, you do one project, when you have one relationship, you do one relationship — so how literally do you put your life of a writer together? well, i have to admit last fall, i was a little bit promiscuous... we like confessions! ..and i saw several projects at the same time, and that was fun. but i think it‘s, for me, it‘s better to focus on a single book because it lets me look at the world that i‘m living in and filter those experiences through a unique mind, because each book has a unique mind. i read a lot of religious texts as a child and there‘s something to the language of the bible that i think is part of — part of these influences as well. i mean, also listening — listening to music. so i think all of that goes in. are you religious now?

um, it depends on who‘s watching this show. laughter. mom, i am very religious! my friends, you know the truth. no, my mother knows the truth. i — i — i look back and feel that the religious upbringing i had was one of the most important components of my development because it gave me a sense of what it means to believe in something outside of myself, something higher, and even if someone later leaves their religion, there‘s still this space — this imaginative space, you know, in your soul, this kind of outward sense of belief and belonging. and also, it is important to me, looking back, because i — i have an appreciation for what it means to believe something that other people don‘t, or to believe something and feel like you‘re kind of an outsider, right? and also, a sense of kind of the totality of that veil, right? once it you put it on, it determines everything you do. but it also, coming back to this

idea, that it means that you believe what other people don‘t believe and vice—versa, but it gives you a compassion rather than an intolerance? certainly, certainly. i think that at the global level, we often see a lot of religious conflict that would lead us to believe religions are inherently intolerant but when you read the text themselves, they pretty much all extol the golden rule, and there‘s a great quote from the dalai lama, that everyone does not need to become buddhist, they simply need to practise whatever religion it is they claim to be following. let‘s come on properly to the much garlanded braggsville, which the new york times said was the funniest send—up of identity politics and racial anxiety in years.

it begins with a 500—word sentence which crackles with energy and sets the pace. the style challenges the reader. what did you want to think in that first huge rush of language? "this is not for me." or maybe it is. but i wanted to let the reader know very early on that it was going to have this kind of frenetic pace and also, it wasn‘t going to be a book that wants to tell you what you already know in a way that you have already heard it, and i feel like this was the important thing, you‘re going to start talking about contemporary society or social issues, no—one needs me to tell them what they already know in a way they have heard it said before. braggsville itself is a place of 700 souls and it is where a young boy comes from who goes to berkeley and he doesn‘t fit in until he meets three other people of varied ethnicity and they call themselves the four little indians.

tell me about them. the four little indians are quite, quite different in that d‘aron coming from georgia, in the south.... all the way through the novel, "are you daron, are you d‘aron?" he talks about dropping the apostrophe early on. he has this anxiety about being a southerner. on the west coast, there is a bit of derision about people who are from the south, so he‘s trying to figure out how he can fit in and sound smart but he is also coming from a small town where he was the valedictorian and that was easy but it seems like everyone at berkeley was a valedictorian and so how does he stand out? he ends up falling in with candice, who is one—quarter native american. or as she puts it, one—quarter

indian, the kind you found, not the kind you were looking for. then you have charlie, who is this african—american kid from a poor area of chicago but who, through an athletic scholarship, ends up attending a residential school and it gives him this great education. lastly, we have louis chang who wants to be the next lenny bruce lee, the next kung fu comedian. one of the key things i was interested in was d‘aron or daron, whatever we are going to call him, was originally black but you changed him. why? when i first started on the novel, i imagined he would be a black teenager from a small town in georgia, but as i tried to get started, it didn‘t make sense that this teenager would move and leave a small town in georgia, go to california and agree to return and visit and participate

in the civil war re—enactment and also have no historical sense of it. it‘s something his parents, growing up in the south, would have advised him against. you get a lot of explicit instruction growing up a person of colour in the south — always be respectful when the police stop you, you know, don‘t talk back. your parents basically give you a laundry list of things that you should do to ensure that you will come home in one piece each night. and that being the case, the story wasn‘t working because the main character would already know... all that. not to go back and do what he did. but they go back because the professor on alternative history course, is talking about the civil war re—enactments that are becoming more popular again,

one of which is in braggsville and the four of them, they go on an adventure which has dark consequences because they decide to do what? they decide what they want to do is stage a fake lynching at the civil war re—enactment to give people a sense of everything at stake. and see if they can start a conversation about what this history means. give us a reading. so this is from the scene when they are in school, in class, and they come up with the idea to do this project. "the table was shocked — the entire class, in fact. they had heard tales of civil war re—enactments but they were still occurring? the war between the states was another time and another country, as was the south. are barbers still surgeons? is there still sharecropping? what about indoor plumbing? like an old loony tunes skit,

tex avery tag ensued. charlie gawked at louis who gawked at candice who generously suggested it as a capstone project to the professor, who googled the event and announced it coincided with spring break. serendipity has spoken." so here we have a really big pot shot at the liberal elite at berkeley. you have lectured in taking classes there but because you are fearless, are you taking a pot shot at the liberal elite? no, no. it was more of perhaps a sustained volley. but let me explain. what‘s kind of happening in the book, i‘m thinking very much about the far right and the far left and these incompatibilities and using them as a space to explore all of the positions in between. when you talk about different black experiences where you are in america, it‘s so obvious.

like atlanta, the african—american experience in atlanta is completely different in the projects of philadelphia. atlanta is unique in that regard. i didn‘t realise it or appreciate it perhaps as much as when i lived there because i remember moving to oakland and working with a group that was giving kids access to the sciences and they told the kids that they should be very grateful to be around so many other people of colour who were successful and be grateful to be in the same room with other people of colour who were successful and i was puzzled and asked the speaker afterwards, why do you act like this is an anomaly? this happens all the time and he says, no, not out here. maybe in atlanta, not out here, so that is a big difference between atlanta and most of the other cities. atlanta is still a viable, what you would say, like a chocolate city where there are enough people of colour who are plugged into the economy at every level.

there is representation at every level. it is rare. when i lived in atlanta, i worked in banking for a minute and there was a time when banks would put underwriters on buses and take them on tours of south—west atlanta so they could see with their own eyes these large homes owned by wealthy african—americans so that when they went back to their offices to do their credit scoring and their underwriting, they wouldn‘t stare in disbelief if an application crosses their desk with an african—american buyer making a million wanting to buy a $2 million house. they are just resistant to that being a possible reality. which brings me talk about barack obama and whether or not, it‘s almost a decade since we knew he was going to be the us president, and how did you view his election?

the great thing about his election is that it showed us what was possible and it also opened the doors to the unfinished conversations that we still needed to have at the time and are only now having, so it wasn‘t until after... everything we see now with trump actually started under obama in terms of the alt—right and the militias... under obama‘s administration, the militias grew 1,000% across the nation. people started stockpiling assault rifles and there is this general anxiety of fear that he might in some way retaliate for this perceived historical injustice that people of colour had experienced in the country. all of this anxiety is mixed up with, will he live

and what is the pushback going to be? we are seeing the push back now. the right is running roughshod. yes. are you pessimistic about america? no, i‘m not pessimistic. it‘s just that i don‘t focus wholly on the aspirational as a writer. i think that everyone has to do what works for them and it‘s very important for us to have books that look at how things could be and it‘s just that these two novels, i felt it more important to talk about things as they are now and to find a way to talk about the difficulties we are facing as a society, right now, in this moment. i want someone who reads the novel to walk away, any of my works, to walk away with a slightly different perspective and perhaps a little bit more of an opening in their heart, and for me that means i have to have some of the criticism as well as the hook. there has to be a movement in the book were there to be

a movement in the reader. thank you forjoining us on talking books. t geronimojohnson, thank you! today we saw temperatures climbing, turned into a pretty warm day for many of us but sunshine did vary, no shortage of sunshine in london but a different story overhead here in cou nty different story overhead here in county antrim, you can see the cloud affecting many western areas through the day, breaking up a little but this stripe of cloud is introducing rain into the far north—west pushing across northern ireland and the western side of scotland through the evening and sinking down into parts

of northern england and wales as the night wears on. underneath this cloud with the outbreaks of rain it‘s great to turn into a pretty mild night but down towards the south—east ahead of that frontal system we will see the odd missed patch, frosty spells, cool night and chilly conditions developing. the weather fronts still sitting in place as we go through tomorrow, see little ben is on the fronts as they i’u ns little ben is on the fronts as they runs along the front, likely to pep up runs along the front, likely to pep up the rainfall for a time, the front also separating some cool air in the north—west to warmer air in the south—east, going to be another day of patchy cloud and sunny spells, temperatures into the mid—20s then we have the weather front fringing into eastern and southern scotland affecting parts of northern england and heavier rain for a northern england and heavier rain fora time, to northern england and heavier rain for a time, to the northwest we will see sunny for a time, to the northwest we will see sunny spells but amateurs will struggle, 17—19, the south—east into the middle 20s. during tuesday the

weather is still sitting, this band of cloud and the odd piece of showery rain at times, just 21 degrees in the south—east, mid—high teens in north—western areas. mist and fog patches quickly sunny spells however later day it looks like we will see rain pushing into northern ireland and western scotland and this brings us some competitions and the forecast for the end of the week because it looks like this weather system is going to spin up into an area of low pressure, some uncertainty about where exactly this area of low pleasure rhythm pressure will end up but it looks like a more u nsettled will end up but it looks like a more unsettled end the week. this is bbc news i‘m rebecca jones. the headlines at five... the former prime minister gordon brown, calls on the labour party to adopt the internationally recognised definition of anti—semitism, saying the soul of party is at stake. the international holocaust remembrance alliance definition

of semitism is something that we should support unanimously, unequivocally and immediately. it will be resolved and there will be a balance of acceptance as people want, but also exactly what other people have said as well, and lord sacks himself, that freedom of speech is important as well. theresa may dismisses calls for a second eu referendum, and insists she won‘t make compromises on her brexit chequers plan that aren‘t in the national interest. some in her party are unconvinced.