Britain has been slightly behind the curve on funding for this, on funding for the security services. Slightly behind. We do need money for that. As you say, it is the russian threat that is quite important. It is interesting here that Philip Hammond is getting involved. He has been forced to step down two weeks ago. Apparently well obviously the ex defence secretary likely to speak out on what is the right level of defence spending. Shouldnt he have been doing that when he was defence secretary. Thats the papers for this year. On twitter we have a person looking forward to andrews papers stack. They have toed and froed a bit tonight. Maybe you can do back at 11. 30, come back then. Up next meet the author. A christmas thriller with the ghost stories of mrjames and carols of kings thrown in. Nicola upson takes her investigator to cambridge in the 1930s where, as is her habit, she helps the police with two different investigations both dark and complicated. Nine lessons subtitled some wounds never heal, izzy will realise a conscious contribute to the english detective tradition, not least becausejosephine in real life was a formidable, now though largely forgotten writer of old style thrillers herself. Welcome. If anyone doubted the debt you feel to traditional story, you would be left in no doubt after this book, cambridge 1930s ghost stories, a very traditional story, in a sense youre paying your debt, arent you, you are making it obvious . I am paying debt to that tradition when i decided to go down a route of novels that featured josephine as the character. I decided i would include all the things we love about the golden age, the puzzle, mystery, red herrings, suspects, but i would also combine that with a modern sensibility. They are set during the golden age period but they are by no means golden age novels. A couple of plot lines which are intertwined which we wont go into in detail because its a thriller and we dont want to spoil it. There are a series of attacks on women which is rendered in a contemporary way, that the writers of that period in the early 30s wouldnt have dared touch . That is the joy of hindsight with this. You can treat crimes like that in a more honest way in the way that people would have talked about it to each other at the time but no way would it have put into print. That series of attacks you mentioned is based on a much more contemporary crime, the cambridge rapist peter cook. Were you around at the time . No, i was young then. But my partner, interestingly was in cambridge at that time and she ran a music club at a pub there called the anchor, when peter cook was caught and his picture started appearing in the papers, she realised she knew him, served him every week, he worked for a Wine Merchant and delivered wine to the pub. The shock of that which still resonates with her, i think the fear of the cambridge rapist for people who lived in cambridge in that time is still very strong, you can see the bars in the ground floor windows. And the intimacy of the setting has a lot to do with this story as well, everybody knowing everybody else, you know, students in that era lodging in all the little passageways close to the University Centre in the city. Its a very claustrophobic atmosphere . It is and its amazing how easily that crime transported itself back to the 30s. In the 705, the people who suffered that were a group of female students by and large. That wouldnt be relevant in the 30s but transfer that to shop workers, waitresses, nurses at the new addenbrooks hospital and it works very well and those themes, the suspicion of the innocent men, the randomness and the idea that the man who is holding the town to ransom could be your taxi driver, your ambulance driver or the man you queued next to in the cinema is still very relevant. We are dealing with a series of murders which conceal a secret not unconnected and i think its fair to say that with the ghost stories of mrjames who was kings at one point and used to read the stories to students at christmas. Now, its an extraordinarily innocent kind of scene in a way, you know, going in and listening to the boss reading out these things. It is. Quite intoxicating. It is. I love the fact that mr james or monty as he was known, hed emerge from the study with the ink still wet, blow out every candle but one and read the new story to the handful of very select people gathered around to hear it. When you write books like i do, that mix fact with fiction, you are always looking for that little window in the truth thats just big enough to get your story through and i found that in december 1913 when for the first time mr james didnt finish a new story. What if something so terrible happened that christmas that 25 years later those men gathered round to be entertained started dying, killed off one by one in ways that echo his stories. You have said it. You talk about merging fact and fiction and there is one particular way in which that is relevant to this novel and the six that preceded it in the series as it were. That is the character ofjosephine who acts as an investigator and assistant to the police. Shes on the scene, realises things and has insights. But of course she was a practitioner of the detective novel in the golden age, wrote i think eight books. What was it that attracted you to her as a character . It was in particular her novel, the franchise affair which when i read it, i loved the fact that way back in 19a8 someone was brave enough to write about two women abusing a young girl. She picked up the golden age rule book and seemed to rip it to shreds. No murder, no puzzle, no brilliant detective. It was a book that could be read on many levels. Thats what i love about her. Although reading it now, its about an england that for better or worse is gone and you feel the sunshine on your face when you pick it up, its nostalgic. There is a depth, modernness and darkness to it which is way ahead of her time and that is what appealed to me. She had a life in the theatre, wrote great plays in the west end that ran for over a year. She worked withjohn gielgud. Importantly, for her as a character, there were lots of gaps in her life. A bold thing to do, pick a real person that you didnt know, and stick her in a book as a protagonist, as someone who makes the plot turn. Did you have to think hard before you did that . I did actually in honesty. It felt like a brave thing to do. The novels have had a long gestation period so it was before real characters in fiction and film were quite as prevalent as they are today. I also knew that although tay wasnt as well known as people like christian and marsh, the people who loved her work really loved her. In life she was complex and difficult and contrary. She was aloof and dogmatic. Although i dont want to sugar over the cracks, i want to bring the flaws in her personality forward, that is what people like about the character in the books that, she isnt nice all the time, sometimes you want to pick her up, shake her and scream at her. But she is quite likeable. If you are going to use the character of the outsider, the assistant, you know, that looks in on the case and whether its a blundering Police Officer or somebody who just has missed the main point, you know, comes in and sets it right that. Comes in and sets it right. That person is bound to be a little bit awkward, a little bit of a loner really . She is. That is very true to the woman in real life. She did keep herself to herself very clearly and i think im enjoying very much creating the relationship thatjosephine in the books has with Archie Penrose in the book. Rather than do the on off romance thing, which is another much loved thing about crime fiction, to write about their friendship and the ups and downs, particularly in the context of this novel where josephines gift forfriendship is more needed than ever, is quite an interesting thing to look at. Its a pretty gruesome book in the sense that the crimes that we are dealing with in two parallel series of events, leave nothing to the imagination, theyve got a modern sensibility, if that is the right word, about them, particularly the first one. Do you ever feel reluctance, a distaste to go so near the edge in what people will do to each other . I think everybody who writes crime fiction has a line and you dont know what that line is until youre nearly at it and, i agree with you very much that the first murder in this book comes close. I think also what is important to me and has been throughout all my books, is to make those murders very, very relevant to the victim, to the life they led before they became the corpse in your puzzle or the victim in a murder inquiry. I think the crimes that affect these men in this book are relevant to who they were when they were alive. That is very important to me. Nicola upson, author of nine lessons, thank you. Thank you. Hello. Our weather has ratherflick fla ked hello. Our weather has ratherflick flaked between the cases of autumn of late. You remember the floods in the north west. Things have calmed down nicely for some but at the same time others have recorded this weekend, their first snow of the season. Weekend, their first snow of the season. And there we are about to change again. Over my shoulder an area of low pressure throwing the frontal systems down and across the British Isles during the course of the night. Quite wet for a time. 30 01 the night. Quite wet for a time. 30 or a0 mill meeters in some places and windy, too. Some gusts around a0 miles per hour. Really for the most part, within the body of the area of low pressure, the air is relatively mild. Lets see how we are shaping up mild. Lets see how we are shaping up first thing on monday. Some rain heavy. A lot of surface water and spray around, where it stopped be raining, north of the rain band. But along the rain band heavy pulses of rain, a303 territory 0 into the a30. North of that, a mixture of sunny spells to the east of the pennines but plenty of showers to be had and again some wintry in nature. Well gang them together again across the far north of scotland, the tail end of the front in the north there, taking a time to pull away into the north sea the wind a feature of the day but the temperatures notjust as will he as they are going to get, in the days to come, so double figures across the south. And that, really, is the last of the mild air, because once those weather fronts have moved across the channel, off into the near contint, that, then, hopes the gate to a supply of cold air streaming down these isobars from well north of the British Isles, so thatis well north of the British Isles, so that is what is going to change our weather from the relatively mild airs of late sunday and monday, into something a good deal colder as we get into tuesday, wednesday, and indeed on into thursday. Notice, there is a supply of showers there across northern and eastern parts of the British Isles and off the irish sae, just through pembrokeshire, down into parts of the south west, again some of those showers turning wintry across higher ground. The wind a feature across eastern parts as we get on through the day. Where we have high ground in the east, North York Moors for example, there will be lying snow, and temperatures never better than seven and feeling much lower given the strength of the wind. Briefly milder, then cold, and watch out for the biting wind. This is bbc news. International trade secretary liam fox is the future of the irish border can be resolved into the uk and eu reach a trade agreement. Brothers Alison Elliott folsom are among five people who died when a stolen car hit a tree in leeds. Nazanin rockliffs husband says allegations on tv were prejudicing her trial. I read a lot to airlines over the plume of ash from the volcano on the island of bali. A red alert. Also in the next allah, changing guard buckingham palace. Sailors performed the famous ceremony for the first time in history as a part ofa the first time in history as a part of a year long celebration for the navy. At 11 30 p. M. , a second look