Millimetres. To the south, more hit and miss, sunshine around, quite but more demoralising than that was the reception i got sharp showers, thunderstorms from African American critics. Reported. The wind is lighter, feeling warmer in the sunshine. This who did not like the book at all. Evening, nights are getting longer. It was, you know, incest and children. They were horrified by it, rain trundling southwards but are and let me know it. How did that make you feel, slow to peter out. Either side of given that you were quite that into monday, sunny spells and showers. Showers eventually fading. Consciously defining yourself as writing out of that experience . More so across the south east compared with today. Despite it i didnt anticipate the venom. Being a drier day, cooler. 16 19, i thought they probably would be below average. I cant remember the upset because i was talking about us in very real, visceral way, last time we had that. We will be ok and it wasnt a happy story. It wasnt, oh, i was a slave, given sunshine and light wind. And i got free and here i am. Hello, this is bbc news with lu kwesa burak. The headlines the Prime Minister has it was feminine too. Pledged £2. 5 billion to create 10,000 new prison places it wasnt a man and has said that all Police Forces in england and wales will be given extended writing these things. Stop and search powers. Police in hong kong have fired tear gas at pro democracy protesters so i anticipated hostility, in the tenth consecutive weekend but i didnt know how deep and how profoundly they hated of Anti Government demonstrations. The idea of it. They didnt even think about whether it was well written. Lawyers for the alleged victims it was about something that was, of the multi millionaire businessman you know, embarrassing, and convicted sex offender shameful et cetera. Jeffrey epstein have said his death shouldnt yourfirst three books stop the investigation into his alleged crimes. The bluest eye, sula, song into his alleged crimes. Of solomon none of them have any an 18 year old man who got into difficulty in the sea off the essex coast has died white characters in them at all. Days after his teenage sister lost her life in the same incident. The white world is there. It is a presence. It is an oppression, if you like. I wonder if i can take now on bbc news, talking books. You back to your childhood the acclaimed African American writer Toni Morrison died this week at the age of 88. The nobel prize to try to understand where that winning author was considered perspective comes from. By many as one of americas you grew up in lorain, ohio, and experienced institutionalised greatest writers. Segregation as a child. In 2014 razia iqbal interviewed her where did your sense of your identity as an African American girl come from . At the hay festival. Did it come more from your mother, your father, your grandparents . Because all of them had different perspectives on the white world, didnt they . Its true. I didnt experience a black neighbourhood or segregation at all when i was a child. I lived in lorain, ohio, which was a steel town. Im razia iqbal, and im at it was full of immigrants, hay festival for a special talking Books Programme with Toni Morrison. She is the last American Writer to have won people from poland and mexico. The nobel prize for literature. That was in 1993. She remains, though, a towering figure in literature. From herfirst book, the bluest eye, about there were black people an African American girl who who came down from canada wants blue eyes, to her crowning who had escaped oppression. Achievement, beloved, about the impact of 200 years of slavery. There was one high school. There was no segregation because she has always written out of the experience of being an African American woman, there was only one high school, yet her writing has become emblematic of an essential aspect of american reality. And everybody was pretty poor. I would like to start by talking about definitions how you have been defined, a czech family lived next door and gave my mother recipes for cabbage rolls, and she gave them. And how you define yourself. It was really very different i know it probably matters less now, in the 30s in that northern part of ohio. It wasnt like that in the south. But when you first started out but as one notices, on sunday, you see the divisions. Writing, you quite consciously there were four black churches, wanted to define yourself as nine catholic churches, the polish an African American woman writer. One, the czech one, the italians. Why was that . There were four black churches, nine catholic churches, the polish those days, the early days, one, the czech one, the italians. There were four black churches, when i began to write, nine catholic churches, the polish one, the czech one, the italians. Then there were the protestants. I got compliments from other there were two or three of them. On sundays, we went to our specific ethnic things, but writers about the value otherwise, it was fully exchanged. But to answer the question about the feeling, it was very much and the beauty, perhaps, of then there were the protestants. There were two or three of them. On sundays, we went to our specific ethnic things, but the book, and in order to elevate my otherwise, it was fully exchanged. But to answer the question about the feeling, it was very much family oriented, because it was such a family of storytelling and singing reputation, i remember that it was inescapable. Being at an authors it was participatory event, and i think it was that is to say, as a child, doctorow who said, toni i had to re tell those morrison is a wonderful writer. Stories to other adults. The same story over and over again, i dont think of her as a woman writer, i dont think but i was allowed to edit it, me and my sister. Of her as an African American you could change it a little bit. You could recite it a little bit. But you were very much writer, i think of her as and he involved in that process of telling these stories that were pretty much Horror Stories paused and i said about life as an African American. A white male writer. I mean, they were powerful laughter. And highly metaphorical, but that is so the categories we were being put in. So i claimed it. Really what was at the bottom of it. Just tell me a little bit about your fathers relationship yes, i am a black woman writer. With the white world as compared with your mothers. Whatever that means. It was quite distinctly different. As i continued writing, the problem very. Became the gaze, the white gaze, you have written about this very that was always present in so many movingly in a series of essays that books by African Americans. It seems to me a lot of how you grew men on the whole, like james baldwin, richard wright, to see the white world is influenced ralph ellison. Informed by understandably yes, they were not writing to me, a combination of both. My father really hated and i always used to use the title all white people. He would not let them in the house. Of Ralph Ellisons they would come to get the insurance payments or something, and they had to stand on the porch. Book, which i love, he was born in georgia, and he went back every year to visit family there. My mother was born in alabama. She remembers the south like it was heaven or something. She thought picking okra by the way, this is an extraordinary book, but the title set me back a little, because it was was a delightful little chore. The invisible man, and i thought, invisible to whom . To them, you know. And we saw ghosts in the woods. So it was like even the best of the slave narratives were addressed to the readers they were always assumed to be white people, and not black people. So i was determined not to do that. Where did that certainty come from, and they said, ah. So for her, it was like that you felt so rooted in the disney world or something. Perspective that you wanted laughter. To write from before but she never, ever discriminated you even articulated or looked at people racially. One at a time, she judged them, the and would not tolerate racism or anti white behaviour notion of the white gaze, and not being interested in the white gaze . There were two things. 01 even comments from us. One was the kind of books being written at that time those were two really in the late 60s by black men. Polar opposites in terms of responding to race. And ijust absorbed, i think, what was most helpful it was always to the man, you know. And creative and healthy for me what i felt was that vacancy about our story, my story. Screw the man, or whatever. Black is beautiful. I was saying, what . What is that about . Wait a minute. Or picolas story. Before we get on the black i was a very avid reader, and the book wasnt there. Is beautiful thing, may i remind you but if it had been, i think of what it was like before . I probably wouldnt have when it was not beautiful, been a writer at all, i would have remained a reader. When it was lethal to consider i want to ask you about a short story you wrote called yourself ugly, not human, other . Recitatif, in which two girls meet in an orphanage and encounter each other again throughout their lives. And so the bluest eye was my answer in the story, one is to that sudden leap into perfection white and one is black, and power and so on, as though there was no but the way you write history that preceded it. This was your first novel, written when you were an editor the at random house in the 1970s. Story, the reader never knows yes. The impulse was notjust which one is white, and which one is the historical context, but black, and it occurs to me a particular incident, an anecdote. That that is something a friend of yours who wanted blue eyes an African American that has informed all of your writing, that you want people to see girl who wanted blue eyes. The characters that you have two things happened. Written about as people first i was walking along with her. And not as the colour of their skin. Her name was eunice. We were very close. Or their ethnicity at all. That was very important to me schoolgirls. That recitatif. Because ten or 11, i think. I had all of the cultural we were discussing whether god existed, and i said he did, clues, who worked where, but nothing about which one of course. Was black, because it is a language problem in writing, seriously. I used to tell my students she said, no, no, there is no god. There is an interesting line in one of the hemingway books, i asked her how she knew, and she said, i have been praying i cant remember. For blue eyes for two years, anyway, it doesnt matter. Im old. And i dont have them. But i remember the line. Laughter. Laughter. When i looked at her, i thought two things. If he had answered her prayers, it would be grotesque. She would look awful. He says. Hes in cuba. And also, i recognised he says two men came toward him. One was cuban, one was black. Beauty for the first time. Maybe they were both cuban. That she was really beautiful, but the black man has no home. He doesnt belong in cuba. And that was not a ten or 12 year old word in connection with your girlfriend or anything. He is outside of it. So when i began the bluest eye, i used that anecdote in what she so i find in so much classical white must have been thinking, how desperate she was to be other, to be white or to have some characteristic literature, this use to that would set her apart. Was there also a sense that you wanted to write a story that didnt exist, which black people are put that there was a silence as different, you know, as separate. And so i began carefully to try to figure out. Of that perspective . Even faulkner was the best oh, yeah. I wanted to read that book, example of not doing that. Which is why he impressed me so much and i couldnt find it. When i was a student and of course later. I thought maybe if i looked hard but the idea was to enough, somebody had written a story about those things de race the language. Lets talk about beloved, which many to put a young black child centre stage without making fun of her. View as your crowning achievement. It is the story of a woman who must live with the consequences of a particular event, and it is set in the aftermath of the emancipation of slavery. Shes not topsy, shes not any of these cliched things. She is a runaway slave, i thought somebody probably was and she makes a choice to do writing that book or would write it. Something devastating to her child. No one did. I was eager to read it, and i didnt think i could read it unless i wrote it. All of my books have been like that. It was rooted in a true story, they are reading experiences for me, but story of margaret garner, and what i found really fascinating was that you make no judgement as well as writing. About what she did. I want to ask you why you think that, as the writer, how did you manage to write it, being an editor and having a full time job as an editor of books, including books by black writers . You know, we multitask. Laughter. I had two children. Im in new york city. I had left graduate school many years ago, taught in universities, went other places, and finally landed this job at random house. But still there was this other thing that i wanted to do, so i sort of published it. It was so important that you did not this sounds silly, make a judgment that this woman but it was sort of secret. I didnt tell anybody would have preferred to have at the Publishing House that i had murdered her own children than to written this book. Have them go back into slavery. Did you tell anyone at all . Have them go back into slavery. Yeah, i remember in the newspaper article where i no. First saw the story of margaret did you tell friends garner that the mother in law said that you were writing . That she couldntjudge her. No. I thought. I had a friend who was an editor everybody decided she was insane, at holt, and he had published a book since she killed her children. But she is very calm, very resolute. By someone whom i knew and i thought, well, who had actually been a student of mine, suppose my children, if i put myself and in that place, i could notjudge. He wrote manchild in the promised land, i realised the only person who had and he said, why dont the right tojudge her, you give your manuscript too . Idid. And that would be the dead child. I had sent it around a little bit she would be the one to say, well, and got 12 rejections. I dont think that was a good some were letters, some idea, or, i understand, ma. Were little postcards, but no. But whatever it was, therefore beloved, so when i gave it to this man, shejudges or withholds 01 does all those things in addition tojudge, but she just wants very much to be i dont know if he liked it, but loved by her mother. You say that on the day you were told that you had won the there were African American writers nobel prize for literature in 1992 coming along, so he took it. I didnt tell anybody i think it was given to you in 1994 at random house. On the first edition, i wrote the flaps, which are like three sentences. My bio is not there. You felt proud to be an american. I put on the jacket the suggestion being that this is really bad news the first you were not before that. If you look at it in the book store, page of the book, which i thought, well, ive written this book. If you look at it in the book store, you start reading it on the cover. I thought that was very clever. But it doesnt display, you cant see it from afar. 00 12 22,058 4294966103 13 29,430 so ive not done it since. I wonder what it was then, that, apart from the honour of being given the nobel prize, what was it in your heart, in your soul, that made you think, im part of this country when i wasnt before . I felt proud in a number of ways. I was a proud ohioan. I was a proud female. There werent a lot of females that had won that prize, you know. The other thing was that they give a great party. Laughter. Oh, that party was unbelievable. For days and days. So everything about it was fantastic. I dont think i have to encourage any of you to put your hands together and thank Toni Morrison. Oh, my pleasure. Thank you. The winds have eased the rain is still a concern. We have had in months worth of rain across parts of cumbria already in the past 2a hours. The heavy rain is set to continue through this evening tonight. It is specifically southern and Central Scotland and Northern England where a concern is and we have had the wettest weather. I had a bit we have had sunshine but a few sharp showers. The rain will continue into the evening. The other major change taking place across scotla nd major change taking place across scotland as the wind direction, down from the north. It is a lot cooler today. Tempered by the state of the rain. Driving across Northern Ireland mike and try across Northern Ireland but continuing in Northern England. The winds are more like today and more sunshine around so like today and more sunshine around so it feels more pleasant out and about. It has been quite warm in the south but it is the last day we will really see temperatures in the low 20s this week. Temperatures will be below par is that northerly air pushes southwards. Only slowly, though. It is stopped in its tracks by this rather wet weather that lingers through the night across the north of england. To the south showers should ease and it will be notably cooler. Temperatures widely in single figures so four and five in the glens of scotland. Tomorrow with a tunnel lows in scandinavia we have High Pressure to the south but the weather setting in on the north westerly wind. Autumnal. Again showers could be heavy and thundery but it looks like the vast majority of england and wales will be drier tomorrow. In wales these showers will fade. Across Northern Ireland will see showers gather and in western scotland. Is more dry for southern and Central Scotland but they will gather as we go through they will gather as we go through the day. But on the whole more dry tomorrow with good spells of sunshine and light winds. Temperatures 16 to 19 and an average of 21 in the south and 18 in the north. It will feel cool but given the light winds pleasant enough. For the light winds pleasant enough. For the rest of the week it looks particularly went and windy. Wet and windy. It remains cool throughout. In the middle of the week it looks like england and wales will bear the brunt of the wet and potentially very windy weather. More like autumn in august. Possibly Northern Ireland and scotland will escape with just showers. Towards next weekend the potential for 00 15 50,759 4294966103 13 29,430 another deep area of pressure again