lot of people will think twice before they book with bn again —— ba again. on the front page of the daily mail. some familiar faces. the duke and duchess of cambridge and their two children, romping duke and duchess of cambridge and theirtwo children, romping in duke and duchess of cambridge and their two children, romping in their garden, i think it is. romping in their garden in norfolk. a really nice image. a nice family snap. very relaxed and casual. i'm taken by the dog in motion in the middle of this shot. they have captured him mid—round ina shot. they have captured him mid—round in a very engaging manner, i think. there is a point to the story. i wish diana had met my family. one must remind themselves it is 20 years since the princess of wales died. i thought it was about the grass not being cut. he needs to get the lawn mower house. it is a lovely photograph. if you were running the royal properties, you would be astroturf in them, wouldn't you? sign up i would. as long as you don't suffer from hay fever, it has to be said. don't forget you can see the front pages of the papers online on the bbc news website. it's all there for you seven days a week at bbc.co.uk/papers. and if you miss the programme any evening, you can watch it later on bbc iplayer. thank you rachel and martin. coming up next, it's meet the author. ann patchett is a novelist who spends her stories without letting the effort show. they race along with the complexities and their rich subtleties subsumed into a narrative that never seems to flag. commonwealth is a story of american life told over nearly five decades from the early—60s and a gate—crasher at a christening sets in train a series of chance events that change two families forever. welcome. why do you think it is that so many readers want to come back so often to family stories? it is the universal after all. it is the one thing that we all have. we were all a baby, we will all die, we all had parents, and it is irresistible, it is what we know. and this begins, as i was saying, at a christening, with a gate—crasher. it is quite a thing to gate—crash a christening. and then chance events unfold over quite a long period which determine the fate really of a couple of families and all sorts of people. you are fascinated by the business of chance, aren't you? lam. i think that chance propels plot. a chance is the nature of story. of course it is something that i am always going to come back to. it is hard to write a really compelling novel when everything is nailed down, when there are no loose bits. to look at it from the other angle, readers are willing to forgive quite a lot of chance and coincidence, aren't they, in the interests of a good story? i think they are but also it has to be plausible chance and coincidence or it has to be reckless. i remember a paul auster novel called moon palace years and years ago where everything was crazy coincidence but it was so crazy and so consistent that the novel was really brilliant. yes. people always talk about thomas hardy who was the master of coincidence and who drove his plot by some of the most unlikely devices. the letter going under the carpet. angel clare's carpet. yeah, that is fabulous. are you a hardy person? i am a hardy person. i like the way that sounds. are you a hardy person? yes, lam. who else do you read for pleasure among the great novelists? where does your taste take you? it is an interesting thing. i was the big henryjames person and somebody who would reread james over and over again, loved dickens, loved austen, but i own a book shop and i have for going on six years and those days are over for me. now ijust read not only things that are just out, the things i read are the things that will be coming out in six months. this is a confession. henryjames, once you get stuck into henryjames he is impossible to abandon, isn't he? no, i will never abandon henry james. i will always those go back every few years and reread the awkward age. that is the thing. it is not that i want to read more james. i want to just keep rereading the ones that i love. it is interesting to look at that in respect of your own narrative because as i said narrative has the feeling of it has a pulse that just seems to keep going. you are a great one for concealing the inevitable artifice of writing. good. whereas james was a great one for putting the inevitable artifice of writing... absolutely. i wasn't influenced by him, ijust love him. i suspectjust reading your prose that you're one of these people once you start a story, although you work at it very hard, and i have no doubt you are very meticulous, it seems to just rattle along. the reason is that i make it all up in my head for a year or two in advance and really work out all of the pieces. in your head rather than on a piece of paper? in my head. don't take notes. then i sit down and i actually start to write and it's miserable and it's hard but i get it all fixed as i go along, so i write a chapter and then work on that chapter for two months. then i go onto the next chapter. the book takes place just over 50 years. a lot of people, there are 11 main characters in this book. a lot of different locations. so i had to know what all of the moving parts were and where i was going. quite a balancing act. yes. and that's something that i love. when i read a novel or when i write a novel. it is juggling and if you throw those balls up in the air i want to see you catch them. when you talk about in the past having read a lot of dickens, and of course in those great books of his, that is what it's all about. yes. this extraordinary balancing of different plotlines, different characters. yes. but all somehow being kept in balance in some almost magical way. and that's very important because you have to have a balance and an equality in the tension of the narrative or what happens is the reader is interested in one plot line more than the other. so they'll read the part they don't like very quickly so they can get back to the character they are interested in. you have to make sure that all of the characters are in a way equally compelling so that the reader is reading at the same rate. you've made an added difficulty for yourself in this book because it covers about half a century. it begins in 1964. actually a difficult time in your country. it was the transition to a new presidency, you had just had a president assassinated, which most people had never known before. it was a very sharp time in american history. was it easy to get yourself back to that period? it was because it is not about that per se. no. certainly these people are living in that time and in 1964 it's probably the end of this world that you see at the opening of the novel, the family, strong catholicism, strong neighbour relations. the end of innocence. then one character breaking off and kind of spinning out into the unknown world. in a way it's a sort of harbinger of what's to come because the process that americans went through in let's say the 20 years after the opening date of this novel was a tumultuous time in terms of social change, attitudes, all sorts of things were unrecognisable from the america of the 50s by the time it was over. it is interesting to me that you say 20 years. because i think of it almost like ten years. basically to the end of the vietnam war. yes. to the middle of the 70s. by the time we had carter and then reagan in office we were heading back to the 50s. we were really tamping down. what really fascinates me, we could talk about this all day, what fascinates me about this is the way that you have found it possible, and very elegantly, to take us from that period right forward to a much more contemporary age without it ever intruding. characters have different attitudes to the world because they grow up in different times but the fundamentals of family do not change. correct. and our responsibilities to family. even as we get tired of them, even as we want them to go away, our responsibility, or pull backwards, is always going to be there. i don't want to ask you an embarrassing question... why ask me? why do you think that so many readers have found you irresistible and continue to do so? what is it do you think about the way that you cast a story on the potters‘ wheel that makes it readable? i had no idea that so many readers did find me irresistible. i am glad to hear it. who knows? the way i look at it is everybody has their own little chip of colour in the larger picture. their voice. and their voice and what their interest is personally, so no matter how much i try to get away from it i'm always going to be writing books about class, about family, poverty and wealth. things that i keep coming back to even if i don't want to. that's my voice. it's a calm and kind sort of voice. if readers know it is authentic they will listen to it. i hope so. ann patchett, author of commonwealth, thank you very much. hello. good evening. the bank holiday entered on a wet node for some of us. we'll take a look at the radarfrom some of us. we'll take a look at the radar from the last few hours and it shows the brain pushing up through the midlands and into northern england. a few heavy bursts. it was wet in the north of scotland. most of it is on the move. moving ever northwards and eastwards. that will clear out into the north sea. by the end of it most places will be essentially drive. the wettest weather in the west of scotland. another cold night. 16 degrees in a few places. quite a warm night once again. in the morning, the shower or two in parts of england and wales. dry but a lot of cloud and a few brea ks dry but a lot of cloud and a few breaks here and there. generally a cloudy start. warm as well. maybe a shower or two in the north west of england. the east of scotland might see low cloud lingering. it is the rain in northern ireland which is a crucial feature. it is rain in northern ireland which is a crucialfeature. it is pushing its way through and then brightens up behind it. behind that we are seeing some fresh air coming in. it will move through scotland and we will see something brighter developing. 17 degrees is to google to the west of the uk. still humid in the south east. a bit patchy rain for a time in the midlands. pretty much try everywhere by dawn on wednesday. the fresh air does get to all parts of early wednesday. we're into figures first thing on wednesday. a much better night for sleeping. the fresh air is coming in behind the weather front which heads off towards the near continent. wins in the north east will be there for quite a while. light winds for the most part. in the wind there will be some good spells of sunshine. whiteley keyetle whiteley —— widely quite warm. we will see some fresh whether developing. another fine day and many places will be no 20s, 23, 2a in the south eastern corner. goodbye for now. welcome to newsday. the headlines. after a deadly siege and a week of heavy fighting against islamist insurgents, have government forces in the philippines now taken control of the southern city? frank talk from the french president as emmanuel macron meets vladimir putin for the first time. also in the programme. . . for the first time. also in the programme... exclusive pictures of the manchester bombers salman abedi is seen here shopping just one day before the attack. could this be india's version of silicon valley? it is running out of water. live from paris studios in singapore,