In 2004, a un plan to reunify the island was put to a vote. The Turkish Cypriot north said yes. The Greek Cypriot south said no. And a Divided Island joined the european union. In the talks in geneva, there are still serious obstacles to be cleared. But there is a chance, a good one, that this time the frozen conflict will end. The headlines on bbc News Donald Trump says the director of National Intelligence has called him to condemn a leaked report, claiming the President Elect was vulnerable to blackmail by russia. Snow and strong winds are causing disruption across many parts of the uk, and some areas of Eastern England are being evacuated following severe flood warnings. Tributes have been paid to the former england manager graham taylor, whos died at the age of 72 from a suspected heart attack. An update on the Market Numbers for you heres how londons and frankfurt ended the day. And in the the United States this is how the dow and the nasdaq are getting on. You can see there the ftse 100 not stop you can see there the ftse100 not stop its 11th consecutive record close, as sterling dipped on the news theresa may will deliver a major Brexit Speech next tuesday. Now its time for meet the author. How much do we still live in tune with the rhythm of the seasons, and why does that matter . In his much admired novels, tim pears has consistently worked to explore our relationship with the land, the old habits, and inherited feeling for how nature works, and maybe to try to rediscover an understanding that could be slipping away. Its one of the themes of his new book, the horseman. Set in the west country before the first world war, telling the story of an unlikely and almost forbidden relationship, and the coming loss of innocence. Welcome. One of the most powerful elements of the horseman is the sense of the force of nature, the cycles of the seasons and so on, and its obvious that thats not a device. Have you always been conscious of that closeness to the way, frankly, the earth works . I have, yes, definitely. The horseman is set in the west country, and thats where i grew up, i am a country boy. But i left there. Like many people, i grew up in a small village. It wasnt for me when i was there, it wasnt where the world was. The world was in the big cities, it was in london, it was in europe. You had to leave home to find it . I had to leave home to find it, it is an old story. And, having left home and begun to think about it some years later and beginning to write about it and use it as a place that i wanted to set stories in, i couldnt then go back except in the imagination. But what youve been able to do, i think, is to recover a feeling for the land that has disappeared for most people. And its inescapable. Because you are writing the first of a trilogy that will take us into the first world war, that it is in part about the disappearance of a way of life and an understanding of country ways. Is that what you feel . Well, ifeel that, but i also feel something else. All the time that i was researching the book, and for the research i read a lot of memoirs by old men Written In The 60s And 70s looking back to their edwardian childhood, and i felt two things very strongly. 0n the one hand, a kind of nostalgia for what as you say had been lost, this closeness to the rhythm of the seasons, Notjust To Nature but also to the animals that they worked with. The relationship between the ploughmen, the carters, and the horses they worked with, which was something that is very much the stuff of the book, and i found very interesting. Fascinating to read about their working lives, and then to write about. And i felt that. But on the other hand, equally strongly, i felt a relief that we dont live like that, because they worked so hard, jim. You can see a bit of that in the story as it develops, but what bubbles up the whole time is your feeling for the power of the sensibility of knowing that this season will be followed by that, the harvest will be followed by this, the animals are doing this, the animals will now do that. Just watching the landscape change. And in your mature years, you still feel that, do you . I think i feel it more strongly than ever. And i will tell you a funny thing, just personally, which is that i grew up with a father who was very much an intellectual, he was a priest and his study was a book lined room where, after i left school at 16, i immersed myself in the canon of Russian Literature that he had on his walls, and i went on from there. And my mother was not at all bookish, cultural, and although she is very much from an upper middle class background, she basically, i realised, is a peasant in terms of being very close to the seasons, and is immersed in the daily round of nature and animals and so on, and it is very recently i realised with a kind of obvious revelation that i am both my parents child, and that i am the intellectual, but i am also the present. But i am also the peasant. It is interesting how long it takes for the penny to drop that everyone is the child of their parents, isnt it . It is extraordinary that you go back to your childhood, to your learning experience, but also to the palpable feeling for the countryside that you so much wanted to get away from. Well, i will tell you, interesting in writing this book, jim, was that as i began to realise what i wanted to write about, these two young people who both have a shared love of horses in a different way, the boy, the son of the carter, and a Hoase Whisperer in the making, and this girl who is the daughter of the aristocrat who owns the estate. I realised that it would only work if i could write about horses. Well, my experience in childhood was that i had a mother who was very keen on horses, and two sisters who had a pony each, and i thought these were just terrifying beasts whose main aim in life was to lure young boys and kick them if possible, and i kept well away. And probably i could count on the fingers of both my hands the number of times i actually fed or groomed or rode those ponies. So you had to do the research . No. The thing was that when i came to write the book, that very limited experience. All came back. It all came up, and there it was. And maybe thats how it is. You could hear the horses, you could smell them . Yes, exactly. Its the first of a trilogy. This one is set in 1911 before those last warm summers after which the world fell apart for so many people. It is going to take us right through the war, is it . One of the things that i had to bear in mind when i was writing it was that these people had no idea what was coming. Of course, some people did. The first dreadnoughts had been built. People in the admiralty knew something was coming, some kind of conflict. But they didnt quite know. They didnt quite know. What it was going to be like. No. These people would have had no idea, and i had to keep reminding myself writing it that i mustnt give them this shadow of the war. It wasnt over them. Its only with hindsight that we see it. That was very important. But youre right, it is the first part of a trilogy, and it is going to carry on. To go back finally to where we began, the sense of loss, notjust in terms of the coming war, which we know about but they didnt, but the sense of loss in the dulling of our senses to something in the seasons, the Chapter Headings are the months here, the year rolls round. Is that something that you think many people are now, against the trend, trying to recover . That more people are aware of what has been lost . Yes, im sure youre right, im sure youre right. But can i just say one thing that i came across in the memoirs of these old men who worked with horses. Of course, as we know, over a million horses were taken to the great war and lost there, and then after the war, the tractor came along, and quite quickly, horses disappeared. Farmers, being unsentimental people, took those horses to the abattoir. And these men who went from working with these horses to working on tractors, they lost that relationship. They lost the hard work, but they were kind of in mourning, and this is something that i was very touched by coming across in these memoirs. These men who were grieving for this lost relationship. Tim pears, author of the horseman, thank you very much. Thank you,jim. Good evening. For some of us it was a very wet day, culminating in a very white evening. Lashing rain across central and southern parts of the country early on but in the last few hours as temperatures have fallen, the rain has started to turn to sleet and snow. Even inside the city of london, and the suburbs and more rural areas, snow cover on the hills. Problems on the roads for sure. The sleet and snow does not hang around forever. Later on it will clear eastwards but that introduces another problem because temperatures will fall quickly. 0nce the skies clear and everything will freeze, water, slush and snow. Warnings have been issued for the possibility of icy conditions into the night. That is the case just about everywhere with further wintry showers across the north, and the west of england and wales. Northern ireland and blizzards ranging across the high ground of northern scotland. A cold night out there. Temperatures widely at or below freezing. Through the early hours we are expecting a little band of sleet and snow to start to work down across eastern parts of the uk. Maybe rain or sleet near the coast but sleet or snow inland could get toa but sleet or snow inland could get to a few centimetres. There is little band could well make its way towards the london area by first thing tomorrow morning, giving a few centimetres perhaps in some places. Expect things like this tomorrow morning. A very icy start to the day, i fancy. A morning. A very icy start to the day, ifancy. A very morning. A very icy start to the day, i fancy. A very cold morning. A very icy start to the day, ifancy. A very cold one. The sleet and snow will clear for the south east but we will see further showers affecting exposed northern and western areas, and gales battering the east coast with big waves crashing onto the shore line, so we could well see coastal flooding in some places. Very cold, needless to say. Temperatures in some spots particularly with snow cover will struggle to get much above freezing. After a harsh frost tomorrow Night Saturday will be another cold day. Lots of sunshine but further wintry showers on the east coast, and in the west it will begin to turn back to rain or sleet. A change in the weather with warmer air trying to come in off the atlantic, but how far east that gets will cause another problem later on. Later on this weekend, that is. I will see you later. This is bbc news. The headlines at eight. After the President Elect accused americas Intelligence Agencies of leaking unproven allegations about him, mr trumps nominee for cia chief strikes a very different note. Ive watched them walk through fire to make sure they did theirjobs in a professional way, and they were always aimed at getting the truth, in depth in a robust way to policy makers. Snow and strong winds are causing disruption across many parts of the uk some people in Eastern England are evacuated following severe flood warnings. 100 soldiers are working with the police knocking on doors of Something Like 3200 properties, there are fears there are vulnerable to flooding over the next 2a hours. Investigators announce that 23 people and organisations could face
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