speaking at the un security council, trump said beijing doesn't want him to win because of the escalating trade dispute between the two countries. china has denounced the "unwarra nted accusation". an investigative website says it's identified one of the men suspected of the salisbury nerve agent attack. he's reported to be a highly decorated russian intelligence officer who was awarded the country's highest state honour. and this story is trending on bbc.com. president trump says he could withdraw support for us supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh if he thought he was guilty of the sexual assault allegations made against him. that's all. stay with bbc world news. now on bbc news: hardtalk. 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? 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, it just seems endlessly... it's just — 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, and more landscape than culture. where, on the surface, it doesn't look like much is going on. right. 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... you know, from the great literary salons of new york and london, how it's quite isolated. yeah, i was acutely aware of that as a younger 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 and join them was there. the pressure to do that, to leave your provincial origins and, you know, go to where the action is is a pretty common story. certainly in australia it was a very common story in the past generation, you know, clive james and germaine greer, and bob hughes, people like that. a whole generation of successful australian authors. success was in the end rooted in london or new york or wherever, by going away. yes, and i wanted to go a different way. i loved where i was from, and 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, and 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 mean, 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. ijust wrote down a couple of 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're not so fussed about — what does that mean, 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 there 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 then try and find universality in the specific and the 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, the 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. is this, 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 is just an 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'd 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. somehow, when you're a boy, they take away your licence to express them in certain ways. you know, you're not allowed to cry, you're not allowed to hold anybody‘s hand, you're not allowed to show any softness, even charity is soft, "that's a bit gay", you know, you see that in the playground. this book, as it happens, and it's coincidental, because it's actually five years since your last novel, so i'm guessing it took a while write. i certainly wasn't writing this into the me too moment. it's come out and it's addressing this point directly about 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, ina 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 figured that once we realised 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 in 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're reaching for what's their due. they are demanding justice and they're demanding changes of behaviour and changes of legislation, changes of outlook. and that's a terrific thing. but men haven't made equivalent strides to change themselves, because... but what about you as an artist?

because there have been a few female critics, mostly in australia, who've looked at your books, and, you know, they're 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, and 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, i think over my adult life i've come 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. good morning. there's been a lovely spell of autumn warmth for some of you so far this week. yesterday, we saw temperatures reach 2a degrees in lincolnshire, same spots, though, by the time we hit friday could be a good 10 degrees lower, if not a little bit more. it's in the next 2a hours we'll see those changes take place. we've cold air at the moment pooling to the north of this weather front, which is set to work its way southwards.

starting the day it's across parts of north—west scotland, and more cloudy outbreaks of rain, notice the warmer colours on the temperature chart to start the day, coolest colours in the south where we've got temperatures in single figures for the morning commute, even a touch of frost in one or two spots. lots of sunshine through england and wales, bit more cloud in north—west england perhaps compared with yesterday. sunshine to the south and east of scotland and northern ireland, but in the north and west, cloud and outbreaks of rain most persistent in the highlands and islands through the morning before it turns to sunshine and showers. as that showery band of rain pushes across the west of scotland through the day, northern ireland into the afternoon and the far north of england. by the end of the day, notice how we have reversed the fortunes. cooler air to the north, warm air to the south, where we could be a degree or so higher as far as temperatures are concerned, than we were during yesterday afternoon. the sunshine continues. finish with sunshine across the north, temperatures in the teens, those clearer skies will work southwards behind a fragmenting area of cloud and just one or two showers as it works

towards southern counties of england. not quite clear in the south coast for the start of friday, a milder night to take us into friday morning rush—hour, a colder one further north, with a touch of frost possible just about anywhere. into friday, high pressure is building in keeping things dry, as that cold front clears away, we have got all of us seeing the door open to the cold conditions. much chillier day on friday right from the start, we will see the morning cloud in southern counties of england clear, that will lead to some sunny conditions for the rest of the day. sunny spells for most, just a few showers in north and west of scotland and northern ireland later. friday, note the temperatures, 12—16 degrees, a big drop on what some of you have been used to so far this week. continue with cool conditions through the night and into the start of the weekend. high pressure largely in charge, a dry start, even if it is a frosty one for some of you. sunshine best across england and wales, clouding over to scotland and northern ireland through the day. showers and outbreaks of rain maily limited to the highlands of ireland and temperatures still

generally around the mid— teens for the most part. by sunday, a bit more cloud drift the southwards across england and wales, the chance of one or two showers here and there. showery scene for scotland and northern ireland, bit more of a breeze and we stay with things on the cool side. a big change from what we have had so far this week. i'm rico hizon in singapore. the headlines: president trump accuses china of trying to interfere in the upcoming us midterm elections. they do not want me or us to win because i am the first president ever to challenge china on trade. one of the men accused of the salisbury nerve agent attack has been identified by an investigative website as a high ranking russian intelligence officer. i'm babita sharma in london. also in the programme: a new blood test that can warn of heart attacks years in advance rolls out across europe.

and going green in india: how plastic waste is being used to build affordable, eco—friendly homes.