in cardiff and birmingham. maybe around 15 and 16 in the far south—west. during this evening and tonight, the rainbow move away from the south, that will keep quite a lot of cloud around. further north, with clear, starry skies, it will turn chilly, especially across scotland. in the middle of glasgow, the middle of edinburgh, could be two or three celsius, but in the countryside, lower than that, so there could be a touch of frost. tomorrow morning. but with this area of high pressure moving in, it could be northern areas that see the driest weather during tomorrow, againa driest weather during tomorrow, again a sunshine and showers today. further south, another lump of rain moving in. this one is moving quite quickly, so by around lunchtime, things should be clearing up across the south—east as the rain does clearly, we get a short sharp burst of gusty winds. maybe a5, 50 mile per hour gusts. elsewhere, a breezy day but not as windy, and again a mixture of sunshine and showers. 0ne 01’ mixture of sunshine and showers. 0ne or two could be on the heavy side,

blown in on the brisk north—westerly wind, but there will always be some spells of sunshine as well. temperatures still quite disappointing, maybejust temperatures still quite disappointing, maybe just eight celsius across shetland, 12 for belfast, 5a plymouth, the channel islands will have someone through the rest of the weekend. going through sunday evening, most of the showers fade away with a dry and finite, and that sets us up nicely for the start of the new working week. this bold of high pressure looks like it is going to bolt across all parts of the uk, so the further south you are, we are looking at them in the dry week ahead, with some spells of sunshine and something a bit warmer as well. further north and west not as one, but some cloud and outbreaks of rain ata times, but some cloud and outbreaks of rain at a times, so for some of us, some brightness to be had. hello, this is bbc news with annita mcveigh. the headlines... the foreign secretary urges eu leaders to "step back from the abyss" of a no—deal brexit and find a way to make theresa may's proposals work. jeremy corbyn addresses labour's women's conference

in liverpool, saying theirs in the party of equality. # when me rock and roll records wake him up # gertcha! # when the poles knock england out the cup... #. and chas hodges, lead singer of the musical duo chas and dave, has died. he was 7a and being treated for cancer. now on bbc news, dame hilary mantel speaks to rebecca jones, in talking books. hello and welcome to talking books. i'm at the man booker 50 festival at the southbank centre in london. we've come to talk to dame hilary mantel, the only woman to have won the man booker prize for fiction twice for her bestselling historical novels, wolf hall and bring up the bodies. her otherfiction may take you by surprise,

with books about ghosts, the supernatural, and the french revolution. the world, of course, eagerly awaits the final instalment of her hugely successful thomas cromwell trilogy, the mirror and the light. hilary mantel, welcome to talking books. we will come to the mirror and the light in due course, but i want to start with the books you have written. 12 novels, short stories, a memoir, and i was very struck by how very different they are — from 800 pages on the french revolution to performing psychics in suburbia, your subjects are unpredictable. how deliberate is that? it's not really deliberate, it's just i don't know how people

manage to write the same book over and over again, because you grow, you change, your interests change. although to me, there are subterranean threads that connect them, however disparate the subject matter they seem to believe. i do wonder, though, if by resisting categorisation, if you like, did that potentially prevent you building an audience early in your career? i think possibly it did. it's tempting for publishers and readers to want to put an author into a category. and, to that extent, they want to be served the mixture as before. and, as you say, you couldn't really predict what i was going to come up with next, and there's a mixture of the contemporary and the historical, which i agree is probably quite unusual. success, when it came in the form of international recognition, fame, money, i presume, came relatively late in your career. did you feel you'd been

ignored up til then? i'd always had good press, but not many sales. that changed. as soon as wolf hall was published, actually, even before the prize shortlistings. and i felt i hadn't pushed out my talent to find where it might go. so i still felt like a work in progress. so as you said, in many ways, wolf hall was the turning point. career—wise, yes, it was a huge turning point. not only in domestic sales, but translations. i think it had gone into 36, 37 languages. and it's just amazing to think that people on the four corners of the earth are reading about henry viii and his wives. well, what you did was followed up with another man booker winner in 2012, didn't you, with bring up the bodies? yes.

i did wonder, how did people's attitudes towards you change after those two victories? do you know, a lot of people thought they were my first books. and lovely, well—meaning people, women mainly, would rush up to me and say, how wonderful you did all of this in your 50s. and i'd feel a little bit sulky, because i'd think, you know, i've been writing since i was 22. i wrote for 12 years before i was published. and that is a more typical career. but people love the idea of an overnight success. wolf hall and bring up the bodies, these two books cover what must be the most famous periods in english history, the most talked about, the most written about. i think indeed you've said to me once that the topics are the british national soap opera, isn't it? yes, it is. what did you think you

could add that was new? cromwell is vital to understanding the crucial ten years of henry's reign. and, if you stand where he is standing, then this familiar material defamiliarises itself and it becomes a much more complex and rich story than we're used to from our schooldays. it's the most remarkable career, and it's the arc of it. you know, the son of the brewer blacksmith from putney, rising to become earl of essex. you have to ask yourself, how is that done? thomas cromwell, people say, that's an ingenious man. do you know he knows the whole of the new testament by heart? he is the very man if an argument

about god breaks out. he's the very man for telling your tenants 12 good reasons why their rents are fair. he's the man to cut through some legal entanglement that's ensnared you for three generations. 0r talk your sniffling little daughter into the marriage she swears she will never make. with animals, women, and timid little ones, his manner is gentle and easy. but he makes your creditors weep. he can converse with you about the caesars, or get you venetian glassware at a very reasonable rate. nobody can out—talk him... if he wants to talk. nobody can better keep their head when markets are falling and weeping men are standing on the street tearing up letters of credit. "liz", he says to his wife, one night, "i believe in a year or two, we'll be rich."

thank you. in the novels, you challenge the traditional view of cromwell. he was always depicted as a villain, and you make a much more sympathetic character, dare i say it even quite beguiling. so what was it that you discovered to contradict that traditional view? well, i discovered a lot of rubbish, really. errors and prejudices just being kicked along from one generation of historians to the next. in many ways, he deserves his reputation. he was ambitious and unscrupulous. he was hardheaded. he was ruthless. but i think, no more so than the typical courtier of his time. but he was a lot smarter. yes. so it is your view the historians got it wrong? not all of them. it's 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, you're 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 we got to the victorians, he was a villain. so something happened at some stage in between, and he is a reflection, like most historical figures, of the times. we are not looking at him,

we are looking in a mirror. you explain that very well. i think that's a very interesting point. how and when did you become interested in him? because you'd wanted to write about him since the start of your career, hadn't you? i began work on a historical novel when i was very young, 22, not long out of university. and i really saw myself as a historical novelist, and i thought, right, first i will do the french revolution and then i'll 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 even younger than they were. mostly they were dead by their mid—30s. you were 22, were you? 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 now. but i can write about a man in 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 the 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 19505 in northern england, but you also explain how you came to be a writer. that was not your original plan, you were going to be a politician and a lawyer. what happened ? yes, never under ambitious. ithink... it is difficult, you know?

a woman from a working—class background with no connections trying to get into law at that time, i wasn't even interested in being a solicitor, i wanted to be a barrister. it was difficult in those days. i wanted to come to london and the centre of things. but with no connections and no money. it was very difficult in those days. but 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, i really had a sensation of doors closing on me. and a feeling that i was not going to be able to make a 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 i still had to work, of course. i still had a job, but i started writing in the evenings,

on the weekends, and i set my stall out for a big novel that i knew would take many years. but that is the beauty of being 22, because the time just stretches ahead of you. and i still had no connections, and i didn't know anybody who was a writer. but what do you need? well, you need a piece of paper and a pencil and you are ready to go. so are you telling me that if you had not been ill, you would not have become a writer? i certainly would not have taken the decision at that precise time. i think possibly i would have made my way back to writing when i was living abroad, during which time i didn't have any meaningful career, so i think perhaps i would have come back to writing at a later stage. but then it would not have been the same book, because i would have been a different self. yes. and of course you drew on your experiences in botswana

and later in saudi arabia in novels that you did write. yes, that's right. a change of climate. i wrote about southern africa. although at an earlier era — i wrote about it in the 19505. so that was a historical novel of a kind. and then i wrote eight months on ghazzah street, set in saudi arabia, reflecting my four years there. we've touched upon your illness, and as you said, it was undiagnosed for many years, and eventually you were diagnosed with endometriosis. that rendered you infertile. i was very struck by a line in giving up the ghost. you wrote, "i miss the child i never had — what's to be done but to write them into being?" is it fair to say you have created the children you never had in your fiction? it would be fair to say i've created lives. they're more like a great tribe

of brothers and sisters, i think. your people, your world. 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 eras and you want to live in a man's body for a while, and all these things writing enables you to do. you mentioned the french revolution, this epic 800 page novel, which was finally published, a place of greater safety, although it was previously rejected by publishers, hadn't it, that must have been difficult, was it? it seemed that someone who would write such a book must be someone of tremendous authority, someone we had heard of from oxford or cambridge.

and it wasjust little me. and 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 every publisher in london with it, ijust said, stop, this isn't the time, 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 doesn't take, 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 very rocky. my morale sank sometimes. i needed a lot of self belief to keep going. but once every day is mother's day hit 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 won the sunday express book of the year prize. and i felt vindicated, in a sense. 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 library and the university. there was 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. which provided all the colour, the anecdotes, the personalities, and i built up from there. i've seen 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 entwined. 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. or it may be that some little piece of information that comes your way, and it need not be information, you might see a picture or hear some music, and it starts you off on a new trail. so you think, right, this is the background music to the scene. i will quote the song and henry

will sing it and change the mood, you know? or you decide to describe an event through describing a painting, and it cuts through the complexities. and so you're always looking, not just 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 completely different novel, beyond black. you mentioned at the very beginning there are themes 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're quite convinced as a child

that there is another unseen reality that is more potent than this one. and that this world is actually the illusion, something in which you are transitory, and it doesn't really matter. what really matters is the world where the dead people are. and that was powerfully true to me as a small child. i think i lost a 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's very powerful in my life. i really feel that the dead are only a whisper away. do you believe in ghosts? i know about ghosts. i have to believe in ghosts. beyond black, which is a contemporary novel,

and takes place mostly within the m25, is actually a kind of work—up for the tudor 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 banal 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 years of work, but i didn't know it at the time. yes. which brings us neatly to the mirror and the light, the eagerly anticipated final instalment in your thomas cromwell trilogy. so how is it going? it's 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 think, now, this project, its pulling away 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 writing, where it seems to have taken charge and it is doing it itself. can you envisage a writing life beyond thomas cromwell now? 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 takes years to realise. so i have to have a long think. i have ideas for two

or three more novels, and i am going to have to make some hard choices, i think. hillary mantel, thank you so much. thank you. hello, the best of any sunshine this weekend will be for northern and eastern parts of the uk. further south and west, rain both today and tomorrow.

today's rain comes courtesy of this swathe of cloud pushing him from the south—west. we already have outbreaks of rain across south—west england, wales, central and southern parts of england, which will continue to work its way eastwards through the afternoon. the northern extent of this rain, probably northern parts of wales, north midlands, northern parts of east anglia. ahead this, a lot of cloud, a few showers, the most frequent across northern and western scotland, quite blustery for a time here. later in the afternoon, winds will strengthen across south—west england. a cool feel across the uk, generally 12 to 16 celsius, that's 18 or 19 for the channel islands. more rain to come across southern parts of england through this evening, eventually easing away but more rain returning in the west later in the night, giving a few showers across northern and western parts of scotland. elsewhere, clearer skies and a fairly chilly night, particularly for rural parts of northern ireland,

scotland and northern england, with temperatures getting close to freezing. milder further south. on sunday, another frontal system works its way eastwards, bringing more rain through the morning. pressure building up to the west, things turning drierfor the afternoon. further heavy rain for a time tomorrow morning, in a similar area to where we will see today, southern and central parts of england and wales. it will clear away eastwards, still some showers coming across on that brisk northwesterly wind, particularly for northern and western scotland, a few filtering their way further northwards and again, temperatures not much higher than a 12 to 16 celsius, so a cool—feeling day. again, quite windy, particularly for east anglia and south—east england but that rain clears away leaving gusty winds for a time through the afternoon. slowly, the wind starts to lose its strength through tomorrow evening. the rain clears away and aside from a few showers overnight, for northern and western scotland, things remain dry as we go into the working week. this area of high pressure starts to build, settling things down but still that moist feed coming in on the northwesterly wind, so, on monday, further showers at times for northern and western scotland. but elsewhere, a mainly dry day with lighter winds and some spells of sunshine.

after a chilly start, temperatures peaking up to between 12 and 16 celsius, so still holding onto that cool feel. bye—bye. this is bbc news. i'm annita mcveigh. the headlines at 3.00 — the foreign secretary, jeremy hunt, urges european leaders to "step back from the abyss," a day after theresa may demanded more respect from brussels in the brexit talks. jeremy corbyn arrives in liverpool ahead of his party's annual conference. in a speech to labour's women's conference, he told delegates his is the party of equality. 0ur party, and our movement, will always have the very highest standards so that everyone is safe and secure in our movement, and sexual harassment has no place whatsoever in our movement. the battle for sky.

rupert murdoch's 21st century fox and the media giant comcast put in their final bids to take over the broadcaster.