Many people around the world will associate you with soho, central london, a bohemian Art Scene in the city. But in recent years, youve been doing your work in the middle of the suffolk countryside. Has it changed the way you work and what you do . Not at all. Not at all . Not at all. Even though the atmosphere around you is so very different . Not at all. I still get up at five in the summer and six in the winter and come into the studio and make a drawing and get going. If i stayed in bed, id just worry about everything, so its far better to be up and at it. And yet, i suppose whats missing here is the community and the people and the buzz, but that. You dont miss it . Weve got the buzz of the bees and the birds. I mean, people buzz about. I mean, not during the morning. Theyre not allowed to come. Tell me about this, because you sound, even now, you sound very disciplined about your work. I mean, the early start, five, 6am, the determination to work every day. Is Discipline And Work ethic really sort of central to you . Yes, im very boring. Im a total workaholic. I never go on holiday and i go a bit pottier than ever if i dont, for some reason, do it for a day and a half. Really . Yeah. Is it true, as ive read, that the first thing you do every morning is draw left handed, even though youre right handed . Yeah. Yeah, i do, i do. I use the dipper in a pot of ink and i use my left hand and, you know, other things can happen with the left hand. This hand, after all these years, since the age of 14, is full of tricks. But this hand, something else can happen. Something i dont know about. Is that. . I mean, for a person who isnt an artist, that sounds almost incomprehensible. But you mean when you, literally, you start to draw with your left hand, youre not quite sure where its going and whats happening . Exactly so. Lets talk about your work and i want to begin with your most recent work, because you have continued painting right through lockdown. You even had a show in lockdown and youre still at it every day. Has whats happened to the world in the last year and a half, has that affected the Subject Matter . Well, at the beginning of lockdown, i made a self portrait, angry, because a lot of plans were up in the air. You know, i was going to show in New York and one thing and another. I mean, like a lot of people, i felt very angry at everything suddenly stopping. And then, of course, it was marvellous. There were no aeroplanes, there wasnt much traffic and you could hear the birds and it was very good not having to see people one didnt want to see, you know . So less anger now . Mm. Well, i think anger is quite a good thing. Anger is energy, anger about things that happen in the world. Thats all part of it. Well, i do want to talk about the way the world is going, and your view of it, because i was very struckjust looking at your recent work, youve done these portraits of animals. And if ones honest, you look at the elephant and the bear, i think there is, and a baboon and they all look pretty miserable. And im just wondering whether thats in some way a reflection of your view of where, you know, our planet is going, where the environmental challenges we face are going. Do you feel somewhat despairing of the state our planets in . Im pretty much in anger and despair, yes. Er, i mean, the sequence of events was, following the many waves of the North Sea that ive painted, then came the walls of water in response to this huge storm that happened at southwold further up the coast and, you know, the terrifying. They were beautiful and terrifying at the same time. And that was Nature Sort of answering us back because the Little Man made Sea Wall seemed to be made of the finest bone china, about to be smashed to bits and then the walls of Water Led on to the edge paintings, which are the Ice Caps Melting and then the Ice Caps Melting, which are still going on, led to the animals, and what were doing to animals. Are these two works behind you, are they part of that sequence . Yes, yes. I dont know if theyre finished yet, but theyre part of the ice cap melting. Yeah, yeah. We are destroying everything, arent we . Do you really. . Do you feel it that bad . Yes, i feel it. I feel it in my bones. And so when you called part of the series the edge, you feel that we are how close to that edge . Well, maybe not in my lifetime, but, i mean, are your grandchildren� s grandchildren ever going to see a tiger . I mean, and the rest of it. Er, we are doing our best to make a hash of everything, it seems. Let me take you back a little bit. You grew up in suffolk, so in a sense, youve come home. Yeah. Youre werent. I was going to say you werent from an artistic family, but it turns out you were, but your father actually proved to be a very talented painter. But when you were a girl and when you were first introduced to painting, you had no idea your dad was actually quite gifted. No. Well, it all started at school when i was 14 and there was an Art Exam and i did nothing but Flick Painted People and generally draw attention to myself because i was deeply in love with the Biology Mistress who was invigilating in the exam. And then. And i saw, then i saw the clock and it was 20 past three and i knew that at half past three id got to hand in a painting so i did one. And when the results came out two or three weeks later, i was top of art and i thought, this is worth looking into. I dont have to try at it. Im good at it. So it started then and then i went on, took my first Oil Paintings under my arm to show cedric Morris And Lett haines, this extraordinary. Known in hadleigh as the artists house, which is on the edge of hadleigh. So were still in suffolk at this point . Yeah. But these two, cedric and lett, particularly i think lett, became real mentors to you. Absolutely. He said the most important thing that anyone� s ever said to me, which is that you must make your work your best friend. In other words, you can go to it whatever youre feeling. Youre feeling tired, youre feeling bored, youre feeling happy, youre feeling randy, whatever youre feeling, go to your work and have a conversation with it, and that is. Thats a sort of mantra that stuck with you for your entire career. Yeah. So let me. I dont want to sound like a sort of cod psychologist, but let me propose to you a thought, which is that youve been frank about your Family Life being somewhat unusual and somewhat difficult in that by the time you came along, your father was actually bisexual and really was more interested in homosexual relationships than he was in a relationship with his wife. True enough. Yeah. And youve always said that painting for you was about truth and it was about honesty. So im wondering whether actually turning to painting and giving yourself to painting was your way of getting to a truth that wasnt really there in your Family Life . Thats absolutely right. Yes. My bedroom became my studio and i tried to get at the truth because the rest of life was more like a sort of charade, really. And the undercurrents that were going on, never spoken about. And then. Yeah. So im just. Im very aware that looking at us across this amazing Studio Space is a painting you did of yourfather. And now, at the other end of your career, as you look back, i wonder what. Im not at the end of my career do you mind . Im very young. No, youre very young, and youre still extremely active and youre still very busy, but, i mean, youre an experienced painter now with insight into yourself and theres your father. And im just wondering whether, in retrospect, as you discovered that he actually had a real painting talent, you came to know him through art in a way that you hadnt. . Yes, yes, youre absolutely right. I mean, he was always behind the daily telegraph and a very distant person throughout my childhood. And my mother was Mother And Father to me. And then when i left camberwell. The art school. Yeah, i had a lot of Oil Paint and i gave him some paints and said, why dont you have a go . And cos he retired from the bank at 60 in those days. And so suddenly one morning when he was 65, nothing to do with me, he took the paints out and started to paint. And thats what brought us together. I was by now in my 20s and that brought us together and we loved each other very much. Let me ask you about portrait painting, because you have portraits that are famous around the world of very celebrated people, artists, even sports people like andy murray, michael jackson, you painted. Is there something about every portrait you do that is sort of common to them all, the way that youre looking at that person . Well, i mean, its the same for anything im trying to paint. I try to empty myself so that the truth can come through me into the drawing or into the painting, and its the truth of the person in front of me, the spirit. I dont have to bother about likeness. Likeness just happens. But i try to paint the spirit of the person and so the spirit of the person can come. If i were painting you, for instance, come through the floor and into me and into the canvas. Do you have to like them to want to paint them . Well, i did turn down painting mrs thatcher, for instance. What, because you. You just felt you couldnt go there, you couldnt get deep into her or. . Well, a Work Of Art has to be a work of Love And Love is not something i felt for mrs thatcher. So i said no. Interesting. So, in a sense, if we look at your portraiture and there are so many, it is a connection that youve had with all those people. Yeah, there has to be a kind of rapport. Youre also very well Known For, and this is perhaps difficult to get into, but youre very well Known For painting death. And indeed, ithink im right in saying you painted your mother right after she died. Youve painted others in death, too. Yes. George melly always said id go down in Art History as maggi coffin hambling. But its quite obvious. I mean, i dont know why people are surprised, because when somebody is lying in the coffin, like my mother or my father, its the last time youre going to see them before they go down there. So its quite obvious to make a drawing. But its not necessarily a time or a moment where. Where you feel like working, cos it is sort of work as well as an act of love. But its the last time you see the person and this whole thing about death, i mean, if you love someone, they. For anyone, they go on being alive inside you, dont they . Tell me about the shift from being a pure painter to then embracing sculpture as well. Why did you move in that direction . Well, i was painting a painting which. It was during the laugh paintings, which i painted in the � 90s when everything was Doom And Gloom and thatcher, and i started to try and paint the laugh cos it was the only thing to do. And the paintings were becoming more and more like an object in space, do you know . The image of an object in space. And so i, being rather slow coming from suffolk, i finally realised i should be making the things rather than painting them. And quite often i could be working on a painting for quite a while and realise it was a Sculpture Or Work on a sculpture for a while and realise it was actually a painting. I mean, these things are very. Funny. And you took on a very public commissions, sort of Monument Statue commissions. And im thinking in central london, you did an Intriguing Sort Of Public Sculpture celebrating Oscar Wilde, you took on a commission to celebrate Benjamin Britten. That wasnt a commission. Which one . The Oscar Wilde was commissioned, yes, but the. But scallop on aldeburgh beach. And just for people who dont know, thats this extraordinary. I think its four tonnes of steel, a sort of elaborate Scallop Shell shape, which is right on the Shingle Beach at aldeburgh. Yes. Its a shattered scallop, you know, because i think Benjamin Britten took Classical Music and wrung it by the neck and reinvented it and so its the shattering Scallop Shell. But a friend of mine had come to tea and said, oh, i thought i was going to be a statue of Benjamin Britten in aldeburgh, maggi, and i thought you were going to do it. And i said, vanessa, youre pottier than ever, because i remembered about five years earlier thered been a lot in the newspapers about aldeburgh not wanting a statue of Benjamin Britten, aldeburgh not entirely approving of Benjamin Britten and it made me very angry. So i started to make the maquette and, you know, the whole floor was covered in bits of Scallop Shell and all the rest of it. And then various people came to see it, including simon loftus, who was the chairman of Adnams Brewery at the time, and he liked it very much and said, well, well have to get some money together to make it. And so we worked together and id begun to make Sea Paintings and there was a show of Sea Paintings at Snape Maltings and 200 quid went every time one sold towards the sculpture. And so people gave money. And so it wasnt. So you raised the money yourself . Yeah, yeah. But i suppose what i was getting to is that that exposed you to a new level of sort of public scrutiny, because these are extremely well known pieces that youre putting in very public places and that just sit there forever and people take a very strong view, both for and against. And for an artist, i wonder what its like when, for example, the good old Scallop Shell has a petition against it in the community of aldeburgh and hundreds of people are saying, get rid of it. I mean, as an artist, what does that feel like . Well. You know, you make a thing on your own in the studio and it goes out into the world and then its up to the world how the world responds, you know . But does it make you angry when these folks. . Well, i was rather. I thought that scallop was one of the more beautiful Things Id managed to make and so the first time there was graffiti on it tin can. Happy christmas, tin can. Move it. 0r. And then happy easter. Anyway, boring, boring stuff they put. I think 13 times it got graffitied. 13 times, yes. I thought. I thought, well, you know, i thought if id wanted graffiti on it, i would have put it on in the first place. No, i was a bit hurt at first. And then ijust got to dennis pegg, who. Peggs of aldeburgh who made the sculpture, he went and cleaned it off. It wasnt a. You know. But i mean, if something is contro. I dont set out to be controversial. I try to make something pure, actually, but it shows its got a bit of life to it if people respond in this way. Which brings me to the latest very public work. Uhhuh. I thought you might get round to that. Now. It is, again, fascinating to see the reaction. So you did this. I dont know if we call it a statue or a monument, a celebration of the life of Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the earliest sort of feminist writers, womens Rights Sort of writers. And its in north london. And a lot of women dont like it. And i focus on the women who dont like it because theyre saying, why have you put this statue together with a sort of Everywoman Figure at the top of it who is naked . And they dont understand that. And im just wondering what your response has been. Well, i was rather surprised at the response of the feminists. I mean, dont they have bodies . I mean, one asks oneself, dont they have bodies . I mean, the idea is that that writhing, Writhing Form Out of which rises this really tiny figure of a woman challenging the world, i mean, that was very annoying in the newspapers. They only ever reproduce the figure of the woman, which is very irritating, but there we are. I suppose one reaction of one Woman Writer was just think about, for example, a celebratory statue of winston churchill, which, you know, portrayed him as some sort of sexy, naked young man. Can you even imagine it . The point is that sculpture is for Mary Wollstonecraft, not of Mary Wollstonecraft, ok . Its for her spirit. You know, the ongoing battle that women have in. Everywhere. And its for mary, its the spirit of Mary Wollstonecraft. And im not interested in making, you know, a historical statue of Mary Wollstonecraft in some old frock, holding a Book Or Something like that. I mean, whats the point . I mean, people would just think, oh, well, thats another historical statue, you know . I mean, i want to speak to people now. Thats very interesting. Youre so keen to be in the now because the now in the Art World is full of discussion about whether there is, in essence, an attempt to sort of make art adhere to a view of the world, which is progressive, liberal, you know, theres this word which so many use now woke and im wondering whether as an artist, you feel there are constraints, unspoken constraints on what youre expected to be. I cant be doing with constraints. I mean, Life Dictates what i. You know, what i paint. You know, if you ask me what ill be painting in six months, i couldnt answer you because i dont know what might happen. Somebody might die or. Like that painting of mine, Gulf Women Prepare For War done in the � 80s. I mean, it was actually four years before the Gulf War happened. But, i mean, isaw this shocking image in the newspaper. It was a Black And White image of these women, which seemed to be in, to my view then in the � 80s, biblical costume. I mean, you see a lot of people around now like that, but then you didnt. And the shock of this image of these women dressed. Dressed in biblical costume, practising with Rocket Launchers in the middle of the desert was a very shocking image and so it demanded i made a painting of it. I mean, you know, things happen and i respond to them. So i suppose my question is, do you think we are culturally more timid today . I think so, yes. And all this political correctness and the rest of it. Yes. You feel that . Yes, of course i do. I mean, would they get the money to make the producers now, one of the great films, would the money come forth to make that film now . I very much doubt it. Interesting. But as an artist, im getting a very clear message that whatever the cultural mores are, youre not interested in adhering to any of them. Youre just going to do the work you want to do. Its whatever hits me in here and makes me do something about it. So i dont actually think about cultural mores and stuff. What next for you, then . What do you mean what next . Well, you talked at the beginning about the Focus Youve had on water and the sea and your feelings about where the planet is going. Will that be a recurring theme or. . Ijust said, ask me in six months. I dont know. Its very bad luck to talk about what youre doing at the moment, and i cant possibly foretell the future. So well have to wait. Youll have to wait. Maggi hambling, its been a real pleasure talking to you. Thank you very much for being on hardtalk. Thank you. Hello there. Sunday was a day of Contrast Cool in The Cloud, warm in the sunshine and in actualfact, across southwest england, we saw temperatures into the mid 20s. A beautiful Sunday Afternoon for many. The next few days look likely to stay quite quiet across the whole of the country. Quite a lot of dry weather around as well, but it will be mostly cloudy, and i suspect the temperatures easing awayjust a touch, around average if were very lucky. High pressure still dominates the story. Its a Blocking High thats preventing Weather Fronts from moving in off the atlantic. But a little bit more of a breeze always down towards the south, and thats going to continue to push this cloud in off the North Sea, which could be taken off on Monday Morning for a spot or two of drizzle. Favoured western areas, perhaps as we go through the afternoon, seeing some sunny spells, but i suspect not as much as recent days. So, the temperatures not as high. Cool in The Cloud and drizzle, 15 17 degrees, maximum values of 21, possibly 22. Now, that cloud will continue to push back in off the North Sea through the night. Thats going to act like a blanket. Its not going to be a cold night, with overnight lows perhaps staying into Mid Teens for some. It will be a quiet start to tuesday, but once again, a rather grey and gloomy one. The High Pressure keeping things very quiet, but again, that breeze just coming in off the North Sea, and a few more isobars, so the breeze picking up, and The Cloud will continue to sit across the country for much of the day. Favoured spots for any brighter, sunnier spells perhaps into northern Ireland And Western Fringes of scotland once again, but those temperatures are going to be a little bit more subdued. Again, were looking at maybe around 15 19 celsius at the very best. Wednesday is the beginning of september. The High Pressure is still with us, little in the way of significant change to the weather story. So, i suppose the good news is you will be able to plan ahead. Theres going to be a lot of dry weather to look out for. And maybe on wednesday, more sunshine coming through scotland, Northern England and northern ireland. Top temperatures in the sunnier moments maybe of 21 or 22 degrees. It looks likely that that dry theme is set to continue as well thursday into friday. No significant rain in the forecast of the next few days to come. Enjoy. Welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, im karishma vaswani. The Headlines Hurricane Ida makes landfall on the Louisiana Coast with wind speeds of up to 240 kilometres per hour. President biden warns things will be tough this is going to be a devastating, a devastating hurricane. A life threatening storm. More explosions in kabul as the us carries out an airstrike, officials say an imminent Isis K Threat has been stopped. Meanwhile, the clock continues to tick down to the us withdrawal from afghanistan, many afghans are still desperate to leave. Flights are