arrogant about it. he can't be walking around like a peacock. it is a huge trauma for the pregnant coleen. itjust reminds me of footballers wives. that popular one. is it popular? that's not fiction, you know? you get overpaid, sometimes and advised, highly skilled footballers who are absolutely praised and revered for their testosterone fuelled antics on their testosterone fuelled antics on the pitch. you expect them to —— could you expect them to go home, park the car, and walk the dog? perhaps we all need a wake—up. thanks very much to you both. we are back at 11:30pm. hope to see you all then. don't forget, the front pages are online at the bbc news website. you can read a detailed review of the papers. it is all there for you. you can also see a replay of this programme with each night's edition of the papers posted on that page shortly after we have finished. in the meantime, thanks to james and caroline. for now, it is meet the author, stay tuned. a story about storytelling, about myth and belief, about human curiosity, and our weakness for a secret. marcel theroux's new novel the secret books is a kaleidoscopic tale of religion and politics that moves from tsarist russia, to the belle epoque in paris, then india and eventually to the brink of the second world war and the holocaust. on every page, the same question teases and torments you — what's true and what is not? welcome. i'm not sure if classification of novels is a good idea or not, but in the case of this very original story, i want to hear how you would describe it as a book. that is a tough one. for me, it is an adventure story, at the heart of it. i wanted it to have the energy and vigour of a classic adventure story. the book itself sprang out of my obsession with another book, which i brought to show you. it's the unknown life ofjesus christ, published in 1894 in paris by a russian emigre. i have always been interested in this story ofjesus, and particularly the big gap in the gospel between his childhood and the beginning of his ministry in galilee, and i always wondered what he was up to in those years. and i came across this apocryphal tale that he had been in india studying buddhism, and it turns out it originates with this book. the writer claims to have discovered it in a tibetan monastery. the how, why and where of that story was the seed. we live in an age of conspiracy theories, and this is a great one. and it produced one of the most famous forgeries which was used as an anti—semitic thing. that period, the writer is a russian in this part of the empire, and he is possibly up to no good. it is fascinating that he is there in the first place. then he comes up with this gospel that sounds like something out of indiana jones, showing that jesus is a buddhist. what a lovely idea that would be, you might think about as you say, when you look at the historical background and what was going on in the 1880s and 8090s, which is a period that weirdly resembles ours, it was a busy time for fake news, a very busy time for conspiracy theories. in many ways, it is a book about stories, about how important they are, and about how we try to work out what is true and what isn't. this leads us to think religious belief. it is a story about story telling wrapped up in a piece of storytelling. that is why i think that the novel is the right form to tell his life, because his life is about telling stories. as i was writing it, i was thinking about the fact that it seems like in the last ten years the word narrative has seized hold of people's imaginations. i don't think people talked about narrative 20 years ago. it is one of the legacies of the blair era. it was peter mandelson that i remember saying the labour party needed to find a new narrative. you could be talking about rasputin! i thought, how weird. what does that word mean? people are so self conscious now about the need to construct stories, to have a back story, a charismatic central figure struggling to do something. and it seems like the techniques of novel writing have been adopted wholesale by spin doctors and political analysts and movers and shakers. when you were writing it, you must have been aware that the whole political debate about fake news, the now famous phrase, about truth, falsehood, the manipulation of truth, had really been taken and thrust into the limelight for us all in a way that wasn't the case five years ago. that was the weird thing about the book. i finished it last spring. fake news wasn't a word when i handed the book in to my publisher, and i had a weird tingling in my spine when people started arguing about the truth and falsehood, and alternative facts, and i thought, this is so bizarre. i suppose there is nothing new under the sun. this book deals with anti—semitism, and that is the oldest hatred of all. it seems evergreen and like it will never disappear. of course, it is a perennial subject for novelists, and yet, there is nothing familiar about that theme in this book — oh, here we go again — because it is wrapped up in this enigmatic figure who clearly fascinates you, almost obsesses you. i found him so strange. here is this guy, in british india, what is he doing? he finds this book and says that jesus was studying buddhism. he then turns up in a lot of other people's books. in real life, the writer of the book actually does. but you only see flashes of him. there is no biography. we don't know when he died, we're not 100% sure when he was born, but he flashes up a lot of times in declassified documents from british india. i have to say that what i have read about him, he doesn't seem like the nicest person in the world. he seems to have inspired distrust above all. but the fact that he was there doing this thing, and that he disappeared from history, ifind extraordinary. in a way, the post—cold war world, with all those horrible certainties removed, has produced, as everybody knows, a version of political chaos that we are living through, and it seems to me that what you are trying to catch there is something of that flavour, almost exactly a century before. what is weird is that that period, it seems that so many other stories that are current are re—emerging, stories about communism, liberalism, what rights we are fighting for, and a lot of very noble ideals lead to rights and extending the franchise to women, all these things. this is a cocktail of very modern ideas, and even the technology is modern. they get the first long—distance telephone lines. ok, you can only call as far as belgium from paris, but still. we think of our period as unique and special in terms of the speed with which news travels, the way fake news can be disseminated around the world. it really wasn't that different in paris in the 1880s. it is also ultimately i think our hymn of praise to the art of storytelling, which can be manipulated and can be damaging, but it is part of the building of a nation, and you feel that with every bone in your body. i do, and i love stories and long to be seduced by them. when i was writing it...my wife came home from a book festival with a bag that said, "stories are bridges to other worlds". i thought, that's true, but stories are also other things, they are also propaganda, poison, lies. and i wanted both for the reader to feel like this story involves them, but also for them to emerge with their eyes open to the manipulations of story, and to see how ubiquitous these forms of storytelling are. marcel theroux, author of the secret books, thank you very much. just the lucky few across eastern pa rt just the lucky few across eastern part of the uk who have seen some sign today. hazier compared with yesterday. a cloudy story for some and a wet story across parts of wales and south west england as the day began. this weather system shunted the rain further east and will continue to do so overnight. the rain will be increasingly light and patchy and resilient. plenty of low cloud, mist, and hill fog down the south—west of the uk. temperatures will drop too much overnight. monday, plenty of cloud, still some of that post and hill fog around. a misty and murky story. sunshine will be hard to come by. from the cloud, areas of light rain and drizzle. especially where our old weather front is still active in parts of northern england and scotland. another weather system is poised to come in. there will be rain early on in the east from northern ireland, and this will spread over scotland for most of the day. it'll be heavier in the west of scotla nd day. it'll be heavier in the west of scotland as it moves in. some strong winds around the northern isles, especially for shetland. elsewhere, lighter winds compared with today. it'll brighten up over parts of england and wales in the afternoon. the chance of catching the odd shower. given any prolonged sunshine you could see temperatures as high as 2a celsius. most of us will fall short of that. but it is quite humid. monday evening and monday night, this system moves out, but it peps up night, this system moves out, but it peps up against reports of wales and northern england. on tuesday, it sweeps to the south—east. behind this front there is cooler and fresh air moving in. a quick moving band of rain pushing south—east across the rest of england through tuesday morning. following behind, some showers coming in, bright, breezy, a sunnier picture, a cooler and fresh picture with the temperatures back to the mid—to high teens. fresher on wednesday and thursday. variable cloud, sunny spells, quite cool at night, and the chance of some showers, particularly in the north and west. a human start of the week. cooler and fresher by the end of tuesday. —— a humid start to the week. and wet and windy by friday. this is bbc news. the headlines at 11:00pm: north korea's most powerful nuclear weapons test to date sparks worldwide condemnation. mr president, will you attack north korea? we'll see. we'll see, says president trump, as the us insists any threat to itself or its allies will be met with a massive military response. the brexit secretary says the eu is making itself look silly by insisting talks with the uk are making little progress. an exodus of myanmar‘s rohingya muslims. we report from bangladesh, where thousands have fled persecution and violence. this is the main land route through which the rohingyas

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