this is bbc news, the headlines... the brexit trade talks are continuing beyond sunday's deadline — after the uk and the eu agreed their negotiators should keep talking. major issues are still unresolved but after a telephone call — boris johnson and ursula von der leyen they said they would ‘go the extra mile‘. children are still missing after gunmen abducted them on friday. secure the agencies are searching a forest area outside the town of ken kerr to try to locate them. one of britain's best—known novelists, john le carre, has died. he was eighty—nine. a former secret agent, le carre drew on his own experiences to create hard—edged thrillers without the glamour of james bond —— but which proved to bejust as popular. james bond — but which proved to bejust as popular. many became films and tv series. now on bbc news, hardtalk.

welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. in any society, the voices that are listened to, the stories that are shared say much about who is deemed to belong, who is excluded. on that basis, britain is changing. cultural power and influence may still disproportionately sit with those of us who are white and male but the achievements of my guest today, author bernardine evaristo, point to a changing landscape. she is the first black woman to win the prestigious booker fiction prize. awards are gratifying symbols, but how deep does the cultural change go?

bernardine evaristo, welcome to talk. welcome to hardtalk. thank you very much. good to be here. well, we're delighted to have you. i think it is fair to say that over the past year and more, this novel of yours, girl, woman, other has been a fantastic success, a bestseller, ithink, for a long time, you saw yourself as a cultural outsider. because of this, do you now feel yourself to be something of an insider? actually, i think i'm really part of the establishment right now, in the middle of the establishment. in terms of how this book is doing in the world but also i have various other positions. for example, vice president of the royal society of literature. i'm a university professor, i've just taken on the role as president of rose bruford college of speech and drama.

so, you know, if you look at my cv and the positions i occupy at the moment, you would say that i am very much part of the establishment. but the difference is i believe in changing the establishment from within these days. so, you know, my politics is still radical and activist. but, um, but yeah, ican—i can... now work from within the power structures. but that shift of perspective from very much being outside, and we'll talk about your beginnings and the degree to which you truly were an outsider, to this position you sit in now sort of inside the cultural tent and accepted in a way that perhaps you weren't before, in terms of your work and the way it's been received, does that make you feel very differently about british culture? i think british culture has a long way to go before it's fully integrated, so my—my success is still, in a sense, an exception. there are very few of us occupying the spaces that i occupy at the moment. so that would suggest that,

you know, we still have a long way to go before we are a truly progressive and inclusive society. yeah, you know, i'm determined to use my platform to speak out because otherwise people will think that because i've had this amazing year and been successful, you know, especially at a later age, published a book, suddenly broken through, that the job is done, and the job hasn't been done. this book was your eighth and you've been at writing for more than three decades. how surprised were you when the bookerjudges in that 2019 round of the prize actually picked you ? ijust swore. i couldn't help myself, and i don't really swear much. ijust swore, i was just absolutely ecstatic and delighted because it's such an important prize and i knew it would be a career changer for me. is it so important? yes. i mean, in the end, it's a bauble, it's a gong, it's something wonderful, but does it really... the booker is more than that. it's...

it was its 50th year so it had been going a very long time. and unless you're a sort of, a sort of very well recognised, even famous writer, when you win it, then it does make you that. it does absolutely revolutionise the careers of writers who win it and definitely has revolutionised my career. and i can't think of another prize that would do that, other than the nobel. is there something a little bit galling about that? you've written eight books, as you say. other books of yours, people now read them and they say, my god, lara, for example, a book that you wrote when you were much younger, terrific, fantastic, why haven't we seen this before? of course, the reason they haven't seen it before, because they didn't actually search it out, they didn't look for it, perhaps they weren't interested in the subject matter at the time. and now that you've got this big award, suddenly everybody is interested in a new way. and is there something annoying... actually, no. you know? i'm very aware of the context. i'm very aware that i've been around a long time and i'm very aware that my book... my books have been there for a very long time.

and, you know, to a certain extent, they have done well. they have sold, you know, sort of reasonably, i suppose. they have picked up awards, they've been very well reviewed, but they didn't break through. so that's the difference. so there's a big difference between having a sort of moderately successful career and breaking through onto the international stage. and if you're a very ambitious person, such as myself, then that is what you want. ah, a lot of your work is, to a certain extent, autobiographical, in that you touch upon issues of race, identity, mixed race, which obviously are a personal story to you. it's not autobiographical, though, my work. at all? the only... lara is... i was going to mention lara. but i was also going to mention, for example, one of the big characters in this book, amma, who, like you, was a radical theatre director, lesbian, as you were for a while. i have to say, amma seemed to me to reflect elements of your character, but maybe i'm misreading it. no, no, i think you're right there because... but, you know, but i think

i have to be very careful about saying the work is autobiographical because one of my novels, the emperor's babe, is about a black girl growing up in roman london 2,000 years ago. my previous novel, mr loverman, is about a gay caribbean man who's 7a years old. right. so clearly not about me. and even this book, 12 characters, all very different from each other. but out of those 12 characters, one, amma, who you mentioned is loosely based on my younger self. so i was very much part of the countercultural community that she came of age in in the 1980s. so, if i may, i want to take you back to your younger self, indeed, your childhood self, because i think your upbringing is fascinating. you were brought up in a pretty white neighbourhood of suburban south east london. your dad was from nigeria, your mum was white english. and you write very honestly and frankly and talk about the degree to which you were, in some ways, fearful of the blackness of your father, of the african roots, which for a long time you didn't understand. why was that a fear?

well, if you look back to... i was born in ‘59, grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s, as you say, in a very white part of london then, woolwich, it's not any more. and my father had arrived in 1949 and didn't really bring his culture with him and certainly didn't pass on his culture to us. didn't want to. um...yeah. he said he wanted us to assimilate. and i think back then you're talking about 60 years or so ago, people didn't really understand that if you want your children to feel at home in a place and, say, a parent, one parent is from an immigrant community, then, actually, it's really a great foundation for them to know about the histories of both their parents. to be very blunt about it, do you think your dad actually didn't want you to think of yourself as a black girl? you know, it's very interesting, we didn't really have that conversation. we were what was called half—caste. he was very much a black activist, but we didn't have a conversation about whether we were black or not.

so the whole culture in the ‘60s and ‘70s was in britain very white in terms of there were no black people in parliament. you didn't see black people on television. you did not see black people in adverts. people in positions of power, responsibility, and you grow up in that culture. you don't see yourself reflected. so there wasn't a sense of ownership of myself as a black person until i went to drama school and became politicised and mixed with other black women and then really developed my black identity. and what you clearly thought in your 20s was that you were not going to put up with this lack of representation for black people in the arts. you were committed to being creative, an artist. and in the end, i think you set up your own theatre company with a friend. yes. so i became... i went to rose bruford college, where i'm president now. which is quite a thing. i know. it's just happened, which isjust wonderful. and i was on a community theatre arts course and they trained actors,

but they trained us to create our own theatre. so three of us, three of the black women on the course left the college and formed theatre of black women, a, because there was no work for us. right? so it was a practical gesture, but also it was a really strong political gesture because we wanted to be in control of our own cultural production. so that's what we did. was it also fuelled by anger? i just wonder whether for you, anger in the course of your artistic career has been a big energiser? it was when i was in my 20s. now i have lots of energy. you mean energy without anger? yes, i'm not angry now. i haven't been angry for a very long time. really? yes. oh, no, no, i'm notangry. i mean, i can be outraged sometimes at what goes on, but that's not what motivates me. but certainly when i was in my 20s, suddenly realising that my upbringing had in many ways been so white, my education had been so white, realising the sort of marginal position of black people in british society, especially women, becoming a feminist, anti—racist activist.

and yes, i was fuelled by anger. i wanted to make a difference. i wanted to put us out there into the world and for our stories to be told. but i would say by the end of my...end of the year, i was going to say the end of my 805, by the end of the ‘80s, i, er, yeah, the anger went. mm. it's interesting because the anger went but your, if i can put it this way, maybe it sounds a bit old—fashioned, but your black consciousness didn't go. and, in fact, that clearly is something that has always and continues to matter to you. yeah. that's right. i don't think that's old—fashioned. you know, i think it's coming back, actually, consciousness, that term. i'll tell you why i said that, because i don't know if you know him, but we had a writer on recently on the programme, thomas chatterton williams, who has decided he no longer wants to see and call himself as a black man because his father was from the deep south, the ancestor of slaves, a black man, but his mother was white and he married a white woman. he's since had blonde, blue—eyed children. he says, looking at my own children, "it makes no sense for me to identify as a black man. "i find it limiting and i don't

want to be put in any box." that's. .. you know, it's not a box. i don't think it's box. you know, people have white identities. they have brown identities, black identities. and to be black in the world is to align yourself in one sense with a billion people on the african continent, on the african continent. there are more brown people in the world than white people. so there is nothing limiting about it. now, i am mixed race myself so i could identify as white. but let's see how far i get with that, right? mm. i would have to wear a banner, right, saying i am white so that when you see me and treat me certain way, um, please remember that i am white. butl... i admire the way in which he's choosing to self identify. that is his choice. but, actually, racism is a lived experience so how you present in the world as a person of colour is how you're going to be treated, to a certain extent. it's interesting because this book, as you say, has 12 characters. now, they are predominantly

black characters. they're also of an extraordinary mix and fluid mix of sexualities and perspectives on the world. and what you do is you tell their stories in such a human, funny, poignant way that that we don't really see them as signifying anything other than themselves. and i wonder if that's exactly what you want. i love that kind of response to the book because the book is really about our shared humanity. so these characters are primarily black british women. as you say, they're a mixture of all kinds of things, including cultural backgrounds, sexuality, classes, occupations, and so on. but, actually, hopefully you connect to their humanity. so they're all on a journey, we're all on a journey through life, they all want things, there are obstacles — some of those are to do with race, some of them are not, some of them are to do with gender, some of them to do with sexuality, but, essentially, if what you get from it is that these arejust people going about their lives, then i think that's a result.

and that people actually who are not black and are not black women have told me they really relate to the book. and i love that because that barrier, those perceived barriers are disappearing when they read the book and they're just connecting to them as humans. you say that in the course of writing the book, you felt something shifting in british culture so that you began by thinking, you know what, this probably will have a limited audience, the kind of people that have read my books in the past, and you ended hoping that it might reach a much wider audience. so what was shifting? yes. so i began it in 2013. 2016 i think was the beginning of the me too movement. and also black lives matter happened first time round about 2014, 2015, and everything started to change. and we also had social media, which, of course has continued to gain in in power in the world in a sense. and also a lot of young women very active on social media. so suddenly feminism came back in a big way. people were suddenly declaring themselves feminism

and proud to be feminism, sorry, proud to be feminists, whereas years ago a lot of people had kind of, erm... well, ithink feminism had been trashed to the ground, basically, or thrashed to the ground by the media and so a lot of people didn't want to engage with feminism. suddenly, through the media me too movement, people were engaging with feminism and then through black lives matter, the, you know, issues around race came to the fore. and then here you go, there's a book about black women, and so itjust felt... by the time it was published, it felt like it was coming into a culture where it was really topical. so, i'm just very interested to know, when you do readings and when you look at sales of the book, and they've been fantastic and you've been on the bestseller list and now it's making waves in america, too, do you find that you're reaching a very new audience for you? and i'm thinking, you know, reaching a lot of men and reaching a lot of white people that perhaps would never have read you before? yes.

you never really know who's reading your work but definitely this book is reaching, for example, middle england, and i love it. and i think middle england likes it. that's a sort of euphemism for small c conservative england. kind of. yes. and i love... i love the fact that people who would not perhaps have picked this book up and also, let's not forget, it's experimental in form — they are now picking it up because it won the booker and from what i gather, connecting to it. so it is definitely reaching a wide audience, globally. and that's an incredible thing. i would never have thought that would happen with my work. in a way, that takes me back to the beginning when i was talking about acceptance and whether you feel more of an insider. you've talked about the notion of selling out and you've talked about your own 20—something self being so angry with the structures of society. what would your 20—something self have thought of the mainstream success you've had and the position you now occupy? i think i think my 20—year—old self felt

so outside of everything. for a start, she didn't really understand how power works in this society. so she thought if you were... you were selling out if you became part of the establishment and the establishment was something oppressive and negative. so i think she would have seen me from the outside and perhaps thought that. but i think if she'd have read the book, she'd have loved the book, because as soon as you turn the page, like you say, at the character amma, she would have related to that character, amma, and said, "oh, my gosh, i'm in this book." so... yeah, but she might have gone on to read what happens to amma. you know, for a long time, she does this radical work which doesn't have much of an audience, but then amma ends up at the national theatre in a really grand... i think my younger self would have found it mind—expanding. and she might have begun at being judgmental and then ended up thinking, "ok, i've learned something from this." you've talked about black lives matter already as a part of the changing cultural landscape. how important is it to you that the discussion continues and that that

all of the people in societies like the uk but in other societies too have a real understanding of what happened in their histories that encompasses the bad, the difficult, the negative, as well as the sort of triumphant and the more sort of imperialist, certainly in terms of the uk imperialist. well, you know, it's so interesting because one of the things around black lives matter, as we know, was that there was a real challenge to british history in terms of how britain has recorded its history. and british history is actually... black british history is british history. and we know that britain owned a quarter of the world at one stage, you know, the empire was vast and that is part of british history. but the way in which british history, british history has been taught in schools and perhaps not in universities, but definitely in schools, has been very one sided and has excluded a lot of those narratives that

don't fit into the myth of what britain is. and i think we need to face the reality of british history, as you say, warts and all. you know... so, when statues are pulled down, and the famous one was edward colston, the slave trader who made a fortune out of that trade and was then memorialised in the city of bristol with a very fine statue, which, of course, very recently people chucked into the...the water and the dockside in bristol. you were cheering that on. that was a symbolic gesture, it had to happen. they had been trying for years to get that statue removed. and he was, you know, really culpable in the slave trade, in the sort of ruination of thousands of lives and also the deaths of thousands of lives. he returns to bristol and puts a lot of money into...into the city and is glorified and mythologised by the city. and, actually, he's a really pernicious figure, in terms of british history. and he shouldn't have been there. and i think it was a symbolic gesture and the conversation, it really led to a really very

powerful conversation about what kinds of commemorations we have of people who have, erm, have been really kind of morally detrimental in the past. right, so that's statues, and its history books, is it also a very active attempt on your part and other writers from the bame community to...to change the power dynamic in culture? i know you act as a mentor and work with a lot of young writers from a diverse range of backgrounds to try and give them a much greater platform and voice. how much does the sort of cultural system and establishment still need to change? it does. it really needs to change. and it's notjust up to black people to be, you know, party to the changes that need to happen. everybody needs to be, you know, involved. we need to be a real community in this country and make sure

that we pull everybody up with us. and i've definitely been involved in all kinds of initiatives for black and asian people in the arts and in literature, to provide more opportunities for them. and i think, you know, the publishing industry is changing as we speak. you know... what do you make then of the pushback that there clearly is now from some, and i referred to myself earlier, the white males who perhaps have been used to a dominant position in cultural life for a long time. there is some pushback. i'm going to quote to you, and i'm sure you saw it, the words of a former booker prize winning novelist john banville who said, you know what, straight white men cannot win the booker prize today. he says that the so—called woke movement, which i don't know how you feel about that word, but he said the woke movement has become a religious cult and it's actually a dogma which is killing culture and creativity. what do you make of that? it's nonsense, of course, isn't it? because, i mean, so many white middle class straight men have

won the booker prize. and i think because... no, his point is about going forward — because of changing mores, it's just going to happen. it's just... well, he doesn't know. who knows? every year, they're a different panel ofjudges who then make their decisions about who they want to give the prize to. ithink... um, i think there's always resistance when there is progression and inclusion. and so, you know, a black woman after 50 years wins the booker prize and then you get people saying, oh, its political correctness or it's part of this woke culture. i mean, ifind it actually offensive. and it's also a really ignorant thing to say, because actually, i think white male middle class men in our society are doing very well and they will continue to do very well. and they will in the future be winning the booker. it's just that they haven't won the booker in the last two or three years. there are some difficult areas, though, aren't there, where people who have strong liberal, or they would say, liberal progressive instincts

have fallen foul of perhaps an element of dogmatism in the so—called woke culture. i'm thinking of the debate about tra nsgender issues and writers likejk rowling who have expressed their belief that there still need to be safe spaces for biologically birthed women. and she feels that the transgender community aren't respecting that feeling. yeah, i don't really want to go there with that. but, you know, i even challenge the idea of... but you do... in this book, you have a transgender character. you do... absolutely. you explore what it means. yes. i don't want to have a conversation aboutjk rowling. um, she's entitled to her opinion. iam... and, you know, she will say she's not transphobic. i would even question the idea of this woke culture. what are we talking about when we say woke culture? are we talking about people who are objecting to some of the ways in which they feel oppressed in this society?

and suddenly it's become something that's almost like a dirty word. and i think it's very dangerous territory because, as i said, i saw the way in which feminism became a dirty word a couple of decades ago. so the people who are objecting to woke culture, it seems to me, are not necessarily the ones who are trying to advance our society. they are just resisting the idea of the status quo changing. a final thought then. you've had a great success with this. we've discussed yourjourney from real outsider to something of an insider, at least having a place inside the mainstream. what next for you? i'll continue doing what i've always done, which is to write books and also to be a literary activist. and, you know, i'm working on a new book and that continues. where's it set and what's it about? i'm not telling you. they laugh. that's a very unfair way to end. no, but i don't... i can't talk about it until it's finished. all right. we'll wait for it. bernardine evaristo, it's been a pleasure having you on hardtalk.

thank you very much. thank you. hello there. it was a wet day across the country on sunday, and there's more unsettled weather to come over the week ahead as well. the more persistent rain, that has been sweeping away out into the north sea and instead, we are seeing more showery sort of of airstream filtering into the uk. that's coming in around that area of low pressure, and that's not going to move very far over the next few days. so lots of showers, actually, coming in at the moment, particularly across western areas. but because we've got a blustry southerly wind, it's a very mild start to monday. temperatures have been rising, actually, in scotland

and the northeast of england. those temperature probably won't change much through the day. good start though with some wetter weather in scotland, and we will continue to feed in quite a lot of showers, maybe even longer spells of rain into some western areas of the uk. those showers will get pushed in land, but there will be some sunny spells too. probably not too many showers for northern ireland and showers becoming fewer in scotland. but there will be brisk and gusty south to south—westerly wind, particularly near those heavy showers, but it does mean it's going to be a mild day. temperatures higher in scotland and the northeast of england then they were yesterday, and the highest temperature this time is likely to be in the southeast, 13 degrees here. there will be some heavy showers, though in the southeast and east anglia during the evening, those showers continuing further west as well. overnight, the showers do tend to ease, skies will tend to clear, and we could well start a little cooler on tuesday. still a mixture of sunshine and showers on tuesday, mostly showers around western and southern coasts. more areas will have a dry day, there will be fewer showers, the winds won't be quite as strong and temperatures

still above average for the time of year, so 9—11 celsius. things get interesting around the middle part of the week because this area of low pressure arrives. it's going to be deepening, not only will be bringing some wetter weather again on wednesday, it will bring some stronger winds. and by the morning, we could be gusting 50—60 mph in the southwest approaches, and those gales will push up through the irish sea and across the north channel as well. so western areas in particular will be windy. we will see a spell of rain pushing its way eastwards and we keep some wetter weather going in northern ireland, perhaps into western areas of scotland. some more rain, stronger winds in the west. again, it's a southerly wind, so those temperatures are 9—11 celsius. really, through the rest of the week, it does stay mild, but it does stay unsettled. a quieter day probably on thursday before we see the cloud thickening, the wind and rain, again, pushing infrom the atlantic on friday.

this is bbc news. i'm james reynolds with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. the first pfizer covid vaccine is being shipped around the us — mass immunisation begins on monday. talks about a post—brexit trade deal are extended. the uk and eu promise to go the extra mile to reach an agreement. one of the best selling authors in popularfiction, the spy novelist, john le carre, dies aged 89. and more than the gunmen abducted them