Have in particular, Mental Health charities have really benefited this time because of the support by the royal family. The royals have come out to tackle an issue which should not be back has been controversial. It is really lovely to see this picture. That has been her work and it is fantastic. A lot of money from the marathon is going towards Mental Health charities. That is a real achievement. She will be writing about her experience in the paper. How she got the strength to even type i do not know. Do you fancy it . When i was in new york, i used to go and see them. It was astonishing. I love that feeling when you run. I have great admiration for people who do that. I cannot see myself doing it. I think it is an incredible accomplishment. What i also admire hugely is people who wear these costumes. I have done it. The rhinos are the fittest people because they are the fittest people because they are carrying around this enormously heavy thing. There is a bit when you go in heavy thing. There is a bit when you goina heavy thing. There is a bit when you go in a tunnel and he had to call on his knees. I think he was faster than me. There are amazing people. You are quite right. It is extraordinary. They make so much money for charity. The other thing doing it which she realise, the crowd gets you round. The crowd is the most amazing thing. These unbelievably generous people come out and give you arab oh as he go around. Other suites are available. They give you sugar. Well done to you. There was me saying nobody around the table has done it this year. We will be back at half past 11. Now its time for meet the author. Dickensian london in the year of the great exhibition, and the churning metropolis of our own time. Brought together by two characters whose stories are intertwined and this and who reach for each other across the years that separates them. Michele roberts new novel, the walworth beauty, is a hymn to london. Its changing ways and its enduring character. And also a book about how we live now, that celebrate Timeless Longings and desires. Welcome. There is a ghostly element to this story. Do you like Ghost Stories . I do love them, and thats partly because i have felt haunted myself a couple of times, and they have had to work out what was going on, and i worked out that to explain a ghost, and the Fear Itit Induced in me, i had to tell a little story to myself to make sense of it. One of the things about the ghostly element in this book is that it is very delicate and gentle. Its not Somebody Clunking along with his head under his arm or chains, itsjust a breath on the neck, that kind of thing. Was that your experience . Yes, it was on the back of my neck, is if someone was pressing cold cobwebs against it. Gosh. And then a mirror fell off the wall in the middle of the night and crashed. And i just felt full of terror, the atmosphere was charged with terror. The ghost in my novel, i think, is a bit of a kinder ghost, its not so scary. Well, i didnt know any of this when we started, but thats really a very interesting story, because the book is wonderfully atmospheric, 1851 dickensian london. And the london that anybody who lives there now in 2011, 2012. You see them, really, part of a continuous story, dont you . I do, and i think anyone who loves large cities with ancient buildings and streets in them, and he walks in, as i do, has a sense, always of history being just below the pavement. Its as though the city is layers and layers of mystery. Sometimes, its popping up, a pavement tilts up, something happens, you pass by an old graveyard, you see an Old Industrial building. Now, the storys told, essentially, by two characters, joseph and madeleine. Whose stories are more than a century apart, and they are told in separate chapters which are interwoven in the book. And its quite clear that you see something, despite all the differences between them, that connects them. What is it . I think they are both very concerned with the lives and fates of young women. Joseph is charging around south london doing research on to the lodgings of prostitutes, of young girls working with prostitutes. And madeleine, a century later, is very concerned with two young female friends of hers, how they survive in the big city, and learning that, obviously, not all young women these days, despite their poverty, feels the need to sell themselves as prostitutes. Sojosef and madeline are having the kind of conversation that they are in a sense, haunting each other as much is being haunted. Madeleine finds in her back garden, shards of bone, old buttons, cloth buttons, little bits of china, and she cant bear to throw them away. Shes been digging the plot. So she brings them indoors, and thats when the hauntings start. By the end of the novel, we understand what those little tiny broken pieces refer to. And do you have a constant sense of the past . Notjust in what happens if you dig up the street, but in the characters who walk those streets, what they thought and felt . And what, in a sense, has been passed on to us . Yes, one of my characters is the grandmother of madeleine. Shes dead, long since, nellie. But she talks to madeleine, sort of, over her shoulder all the time. And she is a real bridge with the past, because thats how i remember my own london grandmother. Her quips and saying, her amazing cockney accent. Her bawdiness, her funny stories. I mentioned that the chapters are intermittent, One Called Joseph and one called madeleine. And the story unfolds way. Technically, thats quite a tricky thing to carry off. Did you find it difficult and did you simply write a joseph chapter, then a Madeleine Chapter . Or did you do a lot Ofjoseph Chapters then stick madeleine in . I started with madeleine. And it was clear, quite quickly, that it wasnt going to work with just her as the narrator. And i was thinking, oh dear, is there really a novel here . And then wentjoseph erupted and just opened a door, went up a staircase in darkness, opened another door, i thought, yes, the story starts now. Well, of course, if we didnt know that you were a londoner before this, anyone reading the book would understand that you are, because its just pulses with a love of the city and its history, its ways and voices. Yes, and ive always lived in london. I grew up in the suburbs in london and moved to london as fast as i could. And i walk around it all the time, on my own, often at night. Always trying to take a different route, happily getting lost, going to a pub, someone will come and talk to you. London is very alive for me, full of ghosts but full of people in the present as well. In that sense, it is still, especially in parts of south london that you set the bar again, it still has a dickensian feel, that sort of churning, nonstop life. The characters who inhabit it. I suppose its like any big city, but london seems to have that quality. I think partly it is because weve got the city of london. And it is always renewing itself, following up new buildings, old ones come tumbling down. And people are very energised, very driven, they hurtle about. Even where i live in southeast london, on the main street, a sort of hurtling that goes on. This is the london that you love. The london i love is very much the modern city, but the city with all its echoes of dickensian times, through Old Industrial buildings. They are venetian, they are neo byza ntine, they are neo gothic, theyjust send me into rapture. I assume you love dickens . Do you know, i have a lot of trouble with dickens. I find him a very difficult writer to read. Thats interesting, why . Partly, its the carnivalesque, elaborate baroque prose. Partly, its the length of the novel. To my shame. Partly, its his absolute incapacity to create interesting Women Characters who arent just sugar dolls. Well, there we are, well get some letters about that. But there is that wonderful capture of a life that is, i suppose, now people would talk about it as being magic realism. You know, spontaneous combustion, all the things that happen, theres a kind of life that takes us out of the here and now with wonderful beeps of the imagination. That, i suspect to you, must be exciting. It is, and i actually find that in dickens essay, night walks, when he describes walking at night, roaming the city, coming across all kinds of strange characters, pausing to chat to them. That is the dickens i love. When did you start this business of wandering around london at night . When i was very young, i came to london when i was 21, after university. And ijust began to wander the streets. And of course, for women, there is a sexual double standard. If youre always told, its dangerous, you mustnt do it, a woman who wanders the streets is called a streetwalker which means a prostitute, a man who wanders the streets is called a psycho geographer, or a flaneur. But i always thought, im not going to let anyone take my freedom away. I have always walked around the streets. So you discovered a parallel universe of your own . I have, because as a reader, ive thought a lot about Women Writers who love the city like i do. So every time im in the city of london, ill think of Charlotte Bronte coming to the coffee house before setting sail for brussels. Or as i move up towards hampstead, i think of elizabeth gaskell, walking from Harley Street to hampstead, for an evening picnic. People like that. And many people will associate that with the walworth beauty, when they pick up your novel. Michele roberts, thank you very much. Thank you very much, jim. Good evening. After a fine and reasonably warm day on sunday, for many of us the weather is about to turn much more wintry through the week ahead. We will start to see some wintry showers. Sleet and snow across parts of scotland and a return to some frosty nights. Gardeners take note. Things will feel much colder over the next few days will stop down to the fact we have a couple of cold fronts bringing cloud and rain to scotland. Behind those fronts much colder air bringing sleet and snow showers to some places. Not all of us will see sleet and snow. Cold across a sheltered glens of scotland. Milder further south, about eight, nine the overnight lows. Take a look at monday morning. By eight in the morning it is a trite and bright start the day across southern counties. Further north about the cloudy picture through the midlands and into wales. Much of northern end will see quite a bit of cloud with a few spots of drizzle. Rain sinking south through the course of day. Clearer conditions following later in northern ireland. In scotland we are in the cold airfrom the in northern ireland. In scotland we are in the cold air from the word in northern ireland. In scotland we are in the cold airfrom the word go for that you can no showers piling in from the north. A bitter, cold feeling day across much of scotland. Heading through the day on monday this Frontal System slips out across england and wales. A cloudy story here. Some outbreaks of rain around aberystwyth to the wash by the middle of the afternoon. Staying dry in the far south. 15 in london. Temperatures only around 7 9d further north. Really cold in the north east of scotland. The cold air will stay with us as we head through monday night into tuesday. The northerly arrow showing where our air is coming from. Tuesday, some sunshine around. It will be a cold feeling day with a mix of wintry showers across parts of scotland. Eastern england as well. Some of the showers cropping up in central and western parts as well quite a lot of dry and bright weather in between the sleety showers. Temperatures ra nt the sleety showers. Temperatures rant about 6 12, significantly cooler than it has been. Head into the middle of the week, the chilly theme continues. Things will turn milder as we look towards the end of the week and next weekend. Bye for now. This is bbc news. I martine croxall. Im. The headlines at 11pm Centrist Emanuel Macron and the far rights Marine Le Pen will contest the run off for the french presidency. Here, Jeremy Corbyn wont commit to renewing the trident weapons system, but labour says it will back the nuclear deterrent. And a royal send off for Tens Of Thousands of runners in this years london marathon. Thes mr cheek hes missed his kick