this is bbc news — the headlines... the american space agency nasa says it'll go ahead with its launch of a giant new moon rocket next monday. the uncrewed maiden test flight for the artemis one mission will send a small capsule around the moon before it returns to earth with an ocean splashdown. donald trump has asked a federal court to temporarily block the fbi from reviewing the material it seized from his florida home two weeks ago. he's also asked the court to appoint what's called a special master — usually a retired lawyer or judge — to act as a watchdog. china has introduced emergency measures to save electricity — as the country battles the worst droughts in some places in more than half a century. shanghai is switching off its famous waterfront lights,

many factories have been ordered to close, and shops are restricting their normal opening hours. now on bbc news, it's hardtalk with stephen sackur. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. london prides itself on being a culture capital, this city buzzes with creativity. now, artistic trends come and go, of course, but my guest today has retained his status as the godfather of pop art for some six decades. sir peter blake came to fame in the 1960s. he is still painting today. so, what keeps his creativity alive?

sir peter blake, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. are you still creating, painting, doing the collage every day? do you still get that urge? i do. i get quite a lot of pain at the moment. i've got a sore neck which sometimes begins to hurt and i have to stop. but i work every day. i haven't worked today yet, but i looked at what i'm working on. let me take you right back. yeah. because i'm always interested with artists to figure out what impelled them to create. you had a tough childhood in some ways. you were a war child. yeah. you spent years away from home and family in environments where there wasn't actually

much to play with. it was sometimes quite lonely and you had to use your imagination. do you think that was important in your development? it probably was. i mean, i've never really thought about that. it probably was. but at the time, it wasn't part of my plan. i mean, i had no intention or thought about being an artist. i mean, the period you describe, i was seven when the second world war started, i was evacuated for about three years to a little village in essex. and then, if you were evacuated, you took your examinations for further education, for where you were, where you came from. so, i took the kent examinations, but took them by myself in essex, and failed, as it happens.

i mean, i didn't go to the grammar school. but i did get into the technical school, and at the technical school the man interviewing me said, "if you're interested in art, the art school in gravesend is also part of the technical school. you could go to art school." and it was as simple as that. you clearly had a flair for the visual arts and for design. you ended up going to one of the uk's leading art colleges. do you think that artistic talent is simply found, or is it made by great teaching as well? it's found. if you've got good teachers, that's incredibly important, and it is inherent. i mean, i'm sure both my mum and dad... my mum would definitely have gone into fashion if she'd

been a young woman now. and i know she would have done something artistic but didn't have the chance. and my dad, it didn't ever come up. but he drew beautiful little drawings for us children of trains and the things he was interested in. and so i think have they had the talent and would have become artists. what inspired you as a young artist, it seems, was the pop culture that was emerging in the late �*50s and the 1960s all around you. i'm thinking particularly of pop music, but also of television, of fashion. this seemed to turn you on. it was an incredible moment, because from the age of seven to the age of 13, one had lived with this kind of... ..idea that you could be invaded at any moment or bombed at any moment,

and the fear of that, and this terrible little man adolf hitler was there somewhere waiting to attack you. and, suddenly, that stopped, which was extraordinary. i want to get you to the 1960s. yeah. you canjump! a period when you really made your name as an artist. and it seems you were seduced, in a way, by the bright lights that came with the new age of television, of pop music, of showbiz. what was it about this period — the 1960s — that really fired you up as an artist? i think, because i was a working—class youth, particularly when i was at gravesend, the other half of my life when i wasn't at art school would be going to professional wrestling with my mother and my aunt, going to speedway — i supported west ham speedway football — i went to charlton athletic ground at the end of the �*40s.

would you describe yourself as a working—class lad? 0h, absolutely. totally. yeah. imean... and your interests were just the interests of ordinary people? yeah, iwas... my life wouldn't have been about culture at all. but what intrigues me is that you saw the potential for turning your passions and your interests, which were, you know, ordinary folks�* passions and interests, turning them into art. and on these walls, you know, we've got the subjects that really turned you on, like elvis presley, like wrestling, with this wonderful piece behind you, a sort of, in a sense, a sort of homage to the stars of the professional wrestling circuit. what made you think that it was ok to turn these popular subjects into art? well, it wasn't at the time, it wasn't 0k. and that's really how i became one of the first

people to do pop art. because what happened at the royal college was the first year you had to spend in the life room. it was compulsory. you had to draw from the figure or paint from the figure. then you could do what you wanted. so suddenly, i've already said to you that i've been an art student for a year, a painting student. so, suddenly, the world was before me. and what i did was i took my life as my subject matter. so, it was autobiographical. so, it included a big interest in popular music — jazz, particularly — wrestling, and all these other things i did. here's a quote from you which gets to that point. you said, "i wanted to make an art that was the visual equivalent of pop music." yeah.

but could you imagine that your art would ever reach people in the way that the pop music of the �*60s reached people? well, it didn't work. i mean, that failed, but out of it came something else. one of the ironies of you saying you wanted to make the visual equivalent of pop music was that you then allied yourself very directly with pop music to reach a huge new audience by doing album covers. yeah. and we have to talk about the album covers. we have to. we have to talk about one in particular, even though i think, over years, you've become sick of talking about it. i've talked about it a lot. but i'm happy to. sergeant pepper's lonely hearts club, 1967. yeah. perhaps the most iconic record album cover of all time. it was an extraordinary piece cos it involved you, your then wife jann, working, actually, very closely with the fab four, with the beatles themselves, to get this image right.

yeah. how difficult was it to get it right? along the way, there were problems and there were difficulties, but it wasn't difficult to make it. but we were inventing what we were doing. i mean, people often think it's a collage, a small collage, and in fact, it was life—size and built in the studio. so, all the little heads were life—size, cut out and hand tinted like a photographer. peter, how did you choose the characters behind the beatles themselves? cos there's such a mix of people. you know, very famous people, some not so famous. well, i think various people claim they did various parts of it. my main claim is that i had this idea that by working the way we were, this crowd who had gathered around this fictitious band of sgt pepper could be anybody. i mean, literally anybody that

one could say a name to could be there. so, in doing that, i made a list, jann made a list, robert fraser made a list, and the beatles each made a list. is it true thatjohn lennon wanted adolf hitler to be in the background? as a joke. he never... we did actually make him, and on some of the outtakes, there is this little figure of hitler. the ones that didn't make it were hitler, jesus... ..mahatma gandhi. it captures something about the late �*60s, doesn't it, that image? it's sort of surreal, it's full of playfulness, of fantasy, but it's also got a sort of innocence to it as well. it was... a nostalgia. it was a moment. it was a moment when i think the beatles possibly peaked around that time anyway, and some of their greatest

songs are on sgt pepper. i mean, i think the song sgt pepper's lonely hearts club band, as a song, is a great anthem. i mean, when i hear it now, it's a great... it's not used enough as an anthem. and here we sit, talking about it, talking about your work on that album cover. and you've done so much else over six prolific decades of art, and yet so many people will always say, "oh, yeah, peter blake, the man who gave us the sgt pepper's lonely hearts club album." you've described that as something of an albatross around your neck. i'm sure you can understand that. well, it almost suggests... it almost suggests you wish you hadn't done it. no, i don't wish i hadn't done it, but i'm always waiting for the question to come up. so, it is the... an albatross isn't that bad, you know?

i mean, it'sjust there as a slight nuisance. but it's interesting that, sitting in front of these pictures here, is also the live aid poster. yes. and also the other, the artwork for "do they know it's christmas?" which is this very modest little picture which we can pick up on, that i think is the biggest selling record ever. i think. i'm not sure about that. the pictures that surround us here are fascinating, not least because of the eclectic subject matter. and you... ..did many portraits in your time. one which intrigues me and which is directly facing us there, is of queen elizabeth. yeah. now, you didn't do a sitting with herfor that. i've done three of the queen now and none of them have been official. i know you are a very

great royalist. you're, as you've said, you're a working class kid who reached the top of the art world and you became, i think, quite familiar with the royals. you met, ithink, prince charles several times. yeah. i guess what i'm getting to is whether you've become a bit of an insider. you began by perhaps being seen as something of a rebel, launching a movement in the late �*50s and �*60s in the art world in britain, and you've ended up being a bit of an establishment figure. yes. 0k. i think to be part of an establishment is probably good. it's used... it's used as an insult, to be establishment. i don't think it is an insult. you know, if there is an establishment and you work within it, it's good to be a member of it. let me ask you about the critics, cos every artist, i guess, has to deal

with reviews, with criticism. you have found, i think, found it difficult over the years to handle some of the criticism. and i wonder whether you feel there's a snobbery in the art world and that pop art was never, or at least in its origins, was never taken seriously by some of those high—minded critics? yeah, i think me particularly, because i think what some of the critics couldn't deal with was that i would do a record cover. and so in a way, it's my fault, and that...they felt i wasn't a pure enough painter, which is true, which is right. what is a pure enough painter? i mean, as you've said, you had the training... i always use frank auerbach as an example, who's an absolute... he was in the year before me at the royal college and who i would say was a friend.

and he goes to work every day, he looks like an artist, he's got a proper studio with a lot of paint on the floor. he's a proper artist. i'm not and i don't claim to be. i'm not an artist in that sense. i mean, i do work every day. but i can't believe you're telling me you're not a proper artist. i'm a different artist. yeah. and what they didn't like about me was that difference. those critics didn't. .. ..couldn�*t understand why i would be common and vulgar enough to do a record cover. and i guess that... that was their problem. there were critics like brian sewell... oh, brian sewell was a separate case. he was a vicious, nasty man. i mean, i know he's dead, but he was vicious. and he picked on hockney, kitaj and myself to attack. so, if he was reviewing

somebody else�*s show, at the end, he would say something like, "but it's not as bad as kitaj." something like that. and i... you thought that wasn't fair? he just was a nasty man. well about the charge... ? although i did once to do an interview with him, and he was absolutely charming and we got on very well, and there was a level where you could almost say we were friends. but within the profession of being an art critic, he was a vicious art critic. what about the charge sometimes laid against you that there's a sentimentality in your work? you know, you clearly use images from your youth, from childhood. but you basically are projecting a... ..a view of the world that is full of emotion

and, some would say, too easy emotion. how do you feel about that charge of sentimentality? you've almost fallen into a kind of trap, which i didn't say it, but is there. sentimentality is a very valid subject for art. it always has been. and again, it used to be used against me as an insult, that my work was sentimental and i shouldn't be doing it. i mean, there have always been pictures of pretty children, of kittens and puppies and things, and my response to that attack was sentimentality is a valid and important subject for painting. we've talked about your background and you're very proud of your working—class background. i just wonder if you think about the britain of today,

whether you worry that it would be harder today to make it as an artist than it was when you started out? oh, much harder! i mean, if i'd been a year older and missed the boat, as it were, it would have been harderfor me... if i'd been younger a couple of years earlier, it would have been harder. but i hit that momentjust at the end of the war when grants were given. all my education was done on grants at gravesend and the royal college. i guess my point is that those kinds of grants and the commitment to getting ordinary kids exposed to art that is being cut today. which is shocking. i mean, i almost take that for granted that it's shocking, so i don't say it, but of course it's awful. and the other thing i've said a couple of times over the years is, really, that all a country or a nation or whatever has is its culture.

it doesn't have anything else. the people making the culture have to be fed, so you have restaurants and there has to be a... ..working system for everything to work. but it's all... eventually what you're left with is your writers and your painters and your musicians, your dancers and your poets. i mean, that's what you're left with — culture. and to stop it is madness. of course it is. you, throughout your career, have painted from what is happening around you, from the culture around you. we've already discussed the fact you're 90 years young. are you still getting inspiration, ideas from the culture around you in this year of 2022?

not necessarily new things. i mean, if brian wilson, when his world tour comes to london, i'll be there to see brian wilson. and i still playjazz every day, but it tends to be dizzy gillespie and miles davis. yeah. and i should say brian wilson, of course, from the beach boys — one of your favourite bands. yeah. see, the reason i'm asking you about your take on culture today is that you said something that really struck me not long ago and i wondered whether it's a fairly bleak thing for you to say, cos you said, "i'm not appropriate any more. to be an artist at this point," you said, and i guess you mean age 90 in 2022, "well, some of the worst things you could be," you went on, "are male, white and heterosexual, "which means i'm in a difficult place, which is fine.

i accept it." do you feel alienated from culture today? i don't feel alienated from it, but it's different, things have changed. i don't know what it would be like to be a young, white, male heterosexual artist now coming out of art school, but i think they would have a rougher time than... i don't want to go. ,, i don't want to say if there's an opposite to that. i don't think there is. whatever�*s happened, whatever�*s happening is happening anyway, so... do you think some of the things you have painted, some of the subjects you've taken on, some of the sort of feeling and imagery you've used, would it be difficult to do that today? it would, yes. i mean, certainly some

of the early pictures of girls, it wouldn't be appropriate to do them today. i mean, there was a culture when some of those pictures were painted in the �*50s, the idea of a pin—up girl was acceptable, it was used all the time. you know, the pictures of pretty women were... ..it was fine to use it. it isn't now. it isn't fine to use a picture of a pretty woman simply because she's pretty. the world has changed, the rules are different, what's acceptable is not the same. but you seem to be saying you accept it, you don't want to fight it. i don't want to fight it, no. well, i talk to myself about it. yeah.

i mean, some of it. some of it i think is awful and some of it i think i dislike very much. but i don't... i don't want to fight it and i don't want to discuss it, really. and a final... and i know if i did, i would be in instant trouble and that would be unfair. you know, iwould be attacked instantly. but even if i said the odd word, i would be attacked probably. i want to end, then, where i began — with the idea that even now... ..you get up and you want to paint, or you want to create, in different ways. do you think that will ever leave you? no, it won't. i mean, as i say, i hit this moment when i was 90 and there was enough work left just to finish the work i've started, to carry me through to however much longer

i've got. and now i've got this exciting new project, which you'll know about soon enough, so there's that to look forward to. that exhibition is indeed something to look forward to. but for now, sir peter blake, i want to thank you very much for being on hardtalk. thank you. it was a pleasure. thank you. i enjoyed it. hello. many of us can expect some quite murky conditions at times during tuesday. that is one symptom of some very warm and humid air wafting

its way across the country. there will be a few showers, equally some spells of sunshine but generally quite a lot of cloud. low pressure in charge at the moment, one wriggling weather front which will bring some rain during tuesday night and into wednesday, some other weather fronts focusing some showers in places, but this very humid air picking up a lot of moisture over the atlantic as it moves in our direction, so that will bring some rather misty, murky conditions, some fog patches to start tuesday, particularly murky for the coasts and hills of wales and the south—west. we will see quite large amounts of cloud on tuesday, bringing some rain at times, but a little sunnier in the south east. a few showers for western scotland in the afternoon. but it will feel warm and muggy, 26 for london, 27 in norwich, and that muggy feel certainly continues into the night. we will see a lot of cloud, still some mist and fog and heavier bursts of rain starting to develop especially across some

western and northern parts, but overnight lows, 14 in glasgow, 18 in cardiff and in london, so to start wednesday, a lot of cloud and some outbreaks of rain. there is uncertainty as to where exactly this line of wet weather will end up, pulses of heavier rain moving along it, but to the north and west of that band of cloud and rain, it will feel cooler and fresher to the south—east of that band of cloud and rain, while the heat will be building up to around 29 degrees in parts of east anglia. but that band of cloud and rain in association with this weather front should shift its way south—eastwards into thursday, probably not much rain left on it by this stage. could just see a few showers into the south—east corner, we will keep an eye on that. more cloud working into northern ireland and western scotland with splashes of rain, but for many there will be sunshine and a fresher feel by this stage, still 27 degrees by this stage in london, but elsewhere generally high teens or low 20s.

as we head into the weekend, a bank holiday for many, and there will be a lot of dry weather around. more cloud and maybe some rain for scotland and northern ireland, and a fresher feel for all of us.

this is bbc news, i'm sally bundock, with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. mission to the moon, nasa gives the go—ahead for its latest test flight, artemis will launch next monday. we are go for launch, which is absolutely outstanding. this day has been a long time coming. lawyers for donald trump take legal action following the raid on his florida home, claiming it was an attempt to stop him running for office. when the lights go out, shanghai's skyline is cast into darkness, as china's severe drought leads to a power shortage. and, return of the liberator, brazil's first emperor arrives