:00:04. > :00:07.England and South Wales this morning. To the Midlands, and
:00:07. > :00:15.northern England and North Wales, showers could return to eastern
:00:15. > :00:19.counties as well. Hit and miss, though. In northern Britain, dry
:00:19. > :00:24.and bright. Further south, low to mid-twenties. It is warming up.
:00:24. > :00:30.Wednesday will see the peak in the temperatures and humidity. The heat
:00:30. > :00:37.will build more widely in England and Wales, we could see the the
:00:37. > :00:41.mid-20s. We could get some thunder on Wednesday and Thursday. It is
:00:41. > :00:46.warming up in England and Wales, but it could turn thundery for
:00:46. > :00:56.Scotland and Northern Ireland. That's all for now. More details on
:00:56. > :01:04.
:01:04. > :01:07.the thunderstorms heading our way Hello. This is BBC News. The
:01:07. > :01:10.headlines: The Syrian conflict dominates at the G8 summit. After
:01:10. > :01:13.tense talks, Presidents Obama and Putin admit they have different
:01:13. > :01:17.perspectives on the way forward but say they both want to stop the
:01:17. > :01:18.violence. However there is some progress as the US and European
:01:18. > :01:21.leaders officially launch negotiations on a vast
:01:21. > :01:24.transatlantic free trade pact, which David Cameron says will add
:01:24. > :01:34.billions to the global economy. Veteran broadcaster Stuart Hall is
:01:34. > :01:36.
:01:36. > :01:39.sentenced to 15 months in jail for sexually abusing girls. Solicitors
:01:39. > :01:43.representing some of the victims say proceedings are under way to
:01:43. > :01:47.sue Hall and the BBC for damages. Moors Murderer Ian Brady is seen by
:01:47. > :01:50.the public for the first time in decades via a video link from a
:01:50. > :01:52.high security hospital at a mental health hearing. Brady wants to move
:01:52. > :01:55.to a prison where he won't be force-fed.
:01:55. > :01:59.The art collector Charles Saatchi says pictures of him holding his
:01:59. > :02:02.wife Nigella Lawson by the throat are horrific but were just a
:02:02. > :02:05.playful tiff. Tonight Scotland Yard said a 70-year-old man voluntarily
:02:05. > :02:10.attended a central London police station and accepted a caution for
:02:10. > :02:20.assault. Now on BBC News - writer Martin
:02:20. > :02:25.
:02:25. > :02:27.Amis joins Stephen Sackur on Welcome to HARDtalk. Early in his
:02:28. > :02:31.writing career, my guest was pigeon-holed as the enfant terrible
:02:31. > :02:34.of the British literary world. Four decades on, Martin Amis remains one
:02:34. > :02:42.of the most successful and closely scrutinised novelists of his
:02:42. > :02:47.generation. Much of his fiction fizzes with dark energy. In his
:02:47. > :02:52.world, greed, lust, addiction and ignorance loom large. And yet, he
:02:52. > :03:02.says that he writes in a celebratory spirit. What exactly
:03:02. > :03:25.
:03:25. > :03:28.Welcome to HARDtalk. Your latest novel is a satire on a state of
:03:28. > :03:38.England novel, but nobody can read it and conclude that you believe
:03:38. > :03:45.
:03:45. > :03:53.that England today is a healthy society. One would not write a
:03:53. > :03:59.satirical novel claiming that. I do not think that anyone believes that
:03:59. > :04:02.everything is going fine. I think there are some fascinating
:04:02. > :04:04.contradictions in British society and it is historically explicable,
:04:04. > :04:14.but this huge interest in the trivial, celebrity, shallow
:04:14. > :04:27.
:04:27. > :04:32.culture... Surfaces, appearances. I can only think that this is what
:04:32. > :04:42.happens to a one-time great power does no longer reverberates around
:04:42. > :04:46.the world as it once did. I think we got through that demotion
:04:46. > :04:51.because the ideology was saying that we do not like empire, if
:04:51. > :05:01.anything, we are ashamed of even having had one. So we make the
:05:01. > :05:02.
:05:02. > :05:06.switch, but subconsciously, it is in people's subliminal minds.
:05:06. > :05:14.you care about the state of England? Yes, very much. I have
:05:14. > :05:18.three children on this side of the Atlantic. We should make it plain
:05:18. > :05:22.that for the last couple of years or so, you have been living in New
:05:22. > :05:27.York. Some saw the book, Lionel Asbo, as a kind of middle finger
:05:27. > :05:35.salute as you left England. We knew that would happen. My wife and I.
:05:35. > :05:41.That was just unfortunate timing. So there was not any element of
:05:41. > :05:51.that? None. I had almost finished the book when I had left. The first
:05:51. > :05:54.
:05:54. > :05:58.draft was done before we even mentioned moving to America. As I
:05:58. > :06:01.was on my way out, every chance I got, every public appearance, I
:06:01. > :06:11.said, it is nothing to do with disaffection with England. It still
:06:11. > :06:13.
:06:13. > :06:17.came out that way. A vicious V-sign from the airport. It never was that.
:06:17. > :06:20.I take that point. But nonetheless, you had talked about characterising
:06:20. > :06:28.shallowness, the sort of selfish nature of current English society
:06:28. > :06:31.and culture, but doesn't it go beyond that? There is something
:06:31. > :06:33.truly depressing about the dominance of casual violence, of
:06:34. > :06:43.greed, of pornography, a sort of aggressiveness that invades every
:06:44. > :06:46.
:06:46. > :06:56.corner of the London that you portray. Yes, but it is written
:06:56. > :07:01.
:07:01. > :07:04.with affection. Affection for what? For England, for the English. What
:07:04. > :07:14.I miss most in America, the Americans are just as tolerant and
:07:14. > :07:15.
:07:15. > :07:21.generous as most English people are, British people. Anyone who has
:07:21. > :07:31.chosen to enter in the spirit of life beyond our shores. But they do
:07:31. > :07:34.not have the wit. Americans are not witty. It is that kind of society.
:07:34. > :07:40.If it is an immigrant society, you are very sensitive about giving
:07:40. > :07:43.offence, and a joke is always an assertion of superiority. If I may
:07:43. > :07:47.pursue that line, a joke is an assertion of superiority, isn't
:07:47. > :07:52.there a sense in which you are asserting a sense of superiority
:07:52. > :07:55.over your characters. So many of your characters are drawn from the
:07:55. > :07:58.working class or even the underclass, and they are
:07:58. > :08:01.predominantly men, who, coming back to this point about banality, greed,
:08:01. > :08:11.lust, violence, they are unpleasant characters in so many different
:08:11. > :08:16.
:08:16. > :08:23.ways. As a man from a comfortable background, looking at the working
:08:24. > :08:33.class, are you not condescending to them? That is my right to address.
:08:33. > :08:37.It is about the underclass. It was questioned for the first time in my
:08:37. > :08:45.life in this book and I have been doing it for 40 years, writing
:08:45. > :08:52.about that class. The absentees in my novels are the middle class. I
:08:52. > :08:55.take the extremes at the top and the bottom. The middle class are
:08:55. > :09:00.well served by any number of novelists but they do not interest
:09:00. > :09:10.me. But is the working class well served by you? Yes, I should think
:09:10. > :09:15.
:09:15. > :09:17.so. Don't you laugh at them?Yes. But I also exult them. Do not
:09:17. > :09:27.forget that the other main character is angelic, superior to
:09:27. > :09:31.
:09:31. > :09:38.me morally, in decency and all the rest, thirst for education. Writing
:09:38. > :09:42.a novel is a very crude business. If Lionel has to be that bad, then
:09:42. > :09:48.Desmond has to be that good and that is how novels are put together.
:09:48. > :09:52.Do you care how your novels are received any more? You have bust
:09:52. > :09:57.your guts to get these books out. Does it matter to you how they are
:09:57. > :10:07.received? That's all you have. Authors have letters from readers,
:10:07. > :10:14.
:10:14. > :10:18.but reviews are all you have. have not been good, have they? They
:10:18. > :10:22.have not been good for Lionel Asbo, and they have not been that great
:10:22. > :10:25.for a number of your later novels. That is not the case. The Pregnant
:10:25. > :10:33.Widow got reviews, House Of Meetings before that got even
:10:33. > :10:37.better reviews. I occupy a perculiar position in England.
:10:37. > :10:44.People think that there is no limit to how offensive they can be when
:10:44. > :10:47.they write about me. I know what you mean because obviously I have
:10:47. > :10:51.looked at some reviews, and maybe the worst were for Yellow Dog, and
:10:51. > :10:58.some of those was so brutal, I was sitting there thinking, if Martin
:10:58. > :11:06.Amis read these, what must have he thought? Particularly from a fellow
:11:06. > :11:15.novelist. It is so downright damming of you and the book.
:11:15. > :11:19.think it is partly to do with my father. When I started out, it was
:11:19. > :11:22.not a great disadvantage to be the son of a young writer, if anything,
:11:22. > :11:32.it was an advantage. But then the whole question of heredity
:11:32. > :11:36.
:11:36. > :11:39.swivelled. I lack legitimacy for this reason, it seems. That the
:11:39. > :11:43.lingering notion is that I inherited a full set of writer's
:11:43. > :11:53.genes and it has not been difficult for me, or I do not have the usual
:11:53. > :11:55.
:11:55. > :12:00.pains that all writers have had. But there is no upper limit to how
:12:00. > :12:07.offensive people are. With Yellow Dog, it was not just reviews,
:12:07. > :12:10.anyone who could hold a pen was queuing up. Paul Johnson wrote and
:12:10. > :12:19.said it was one of those little episodes of militant anti-
:12:19. > :12:23.intellectualism. How thick-skinned are you? Being the son of a writer
:12:23. > :12:32.helps. I would see my father get a battering every now and again. It
:12:32. > :12:35.makes you a bit more detached from the whole business. What strikes me,
:12:35. > :12:42.sometimes in this chair I sound like a pop psychiatrist, but you
:12:42. > :12:46.have always had a complicated relationship with the media.
:12:46. > :12:49.have been a journalist. You spend a lot of your spare time actually
:12:49. > :12:53.writing journalism and travelling the world for newspapers. You have
:12:53. > :12:57.also lead a pretty public life, and at times you have appeared to quite
:12:57. > :13:00.enjoy the limelight and being in the press and on TV, and at the
:13:00. > :13:09.same time, you seem to deeply resent a lot of the journalistic
:13:09. > :13:19.coverage of you. I sometimes satirise the press in Yellow Dog
:13:19. > :13:21.
:13:21. > :13:28.and again in Lionel Asbo. That is absolutely forbidden. They think
:13:28. > :13:34.they made you. So you are being an ingrate if you complain about the
:13:34. > :13:41.press. The literary novel was quite an obscure activity until about
:13:41. > :13:46.1980. Then the media have got so fat that it had to start including
:13:46. > :13:52.literary writers. Because they had run out of rapists and boxers and
:13:52. > :14:00.ne'er-do-wells and depressed comedians. They were reduced to
:14:00. > :14:04.writing about us. But it is sort of a Faustian bargain. I wonder
:14:04. > :14:07.whether you reflect and look at the decisions taken by other top
:14:07. > :14:10.writers, I'm thinking like Don DeLillo and others who have very
:14:10. > :14:14.much kept their distance from the media and living any of their life
:14:14. > :14:24.in public, and they have said, judge me on the novels and nothing
:14:24. > :14:32.else. And you have never done that. No, I have not. I enjoy the
:14:32. > :14:39.interaction. Writing is tremendously solitary. You have to
:14:39. > :14:45.have a huge appetite for solitude and you have to be most alive then.
:14:45. > :14:54.But you get bored. I do not get bored, but it is just a change. A
:14:54. > :14:58.dramatic change from your average about freedom. You have written
:14:58. > :15:04.quite a lot about how important writing as an expression of freedom
:15:04. > :15:08.is to you. Writing is freedom, you said. That is why it is such an
:15:08. > :15:14.agony to contemplate the efforts of writers who are trying to write in
:15:14. > :15:17.unfree societies. How have you responded in the last few days to
:15:17. > :15:20.the mountain of new evidence that seems to be gathering that your
:15:20. > :15:24.homeland in the United Kingdom, there are places where unbeknownst
:15:24. > :15:26.to us, a lot of our Communications, our telephone calls, internet and
:15:26. > :15:36.digital communications, are in one way or another, being marked,
:15:36. > :15:47.
:15:47. > :15:51.monitored and stored. Does that worry you? Yes, it does. You cannot
:15:51. > :15:55.help but be passionately pro-Obama when you see who he was up against
:15:55. > :16:03.in the last election, but he has perpetrated quite a few things on
:16:03. > :16:13.the sly that I much resented. This is certainly one of them. It will
:16:13. > :16:25.
:16:25. > :16:30.be interesting to see if he has to Looking from an international
:16:30. > :16:33.Looking from an international perspective again, Ai Weiwei who is
:16:33. > :16:36.controversial in his own country was shocked. He said that the US
:16:36. > :16:39.was acting like China. With these thoughts about freedom and what
:16:39. > :16:49.America symbolises and represents to those not living there, I wonder
:16:49. > :16:52.
:16:52. > :17:00.if this is changing? I do not see how it can not. How it can do
:17:00. > :17:04.otherwise. One almost feels it as a violation. It is a clear abuse of
:17:04. > :17:13.power. Another area linked to this because it is no doubt one of the
:17:13. > :17:18.motivations for the new reach of the intelligence services. The
:17:18. > :17:28.post-9/11 concern about the threat of Islamic militants. Something
:17:28. > :17:28.
:17:28. > :17:31.that you have written and thought about and responded to. Not so very
:17:31. > :17:34.long ago, about seven years ago, you responded in a very passionate
:17:34. > :17:37.way to revelations about a particular plot to blow up
:17:37. > :17:39.airliners, you remember, over the skies of the Atlantic. At that
:17:39. > :17:42.point, you said and you were thinking aloud, that this prompts
:17:42. > :17:49.an urge to see that the Muslim community should suffer until it
:17:49. > :17:52.gets its own house in order. Yes, the journalists who came to see me
:17:52. > :18:02.and had flown across the Atlantic without a book like everyone else
:18:02. > :18:08.
:18:08. > :18:11.on that flight. This incensed me. It seemed like a victory for
:18:11. > :18:17.ignorance and incuriosity. Wasn't it also an over-reaction from the
:18:17. > :18:21.security people on the ground? This idea about getting the balance
:18:21. > :18:31.right about security and basic freedoms? Once you fall into a
:18:31. > :18:33.
:18:33. > :18:43.fearful mindset then you get the balance wrong. And you say things
:18:43. > :18:43.
:18:43. > :18:47.as for the shires I -- as foolish as I said. I did not recommend the
:18:47. > :18:57.course of action but I floated it. It is a pernicious thing to say
:18:57. > :18:57.
:18:57. > :19:00.because collective punishment is always a bad idea. I ceased to
:19:00. > :19:03.believe that later on that afternoon. I had a chat with a
:19:03. > :19:13.friend and he said, "If you do that then you would turn them all
:19:13. > :19:21.
:19:21. > :19:24.against us." I realised that. It was the first time when I thought
:19:24. > :19:27.that maybe they were stronger than us. What you have said since is
:19:27. > :19:30.that you are not Islamophobic but you concede that you could be
:19:30. > :19:33.Islamist-a-phobic. There is an Islamic heresy or sophistry whereby
:19:33. > :19:35.you justify killing not only others but also your fellows, your co-
:19:35. > :19:45.religionists, by the following means: If they are good Muslims,
:19:45. > :19:45.
:19:45. > :19:55.they will go to heaven. If they are bad Muslims, they go to hell. That
:19:55. > :20:00.
:20:00. > :20:10.is what Islam calls people like Osama Bin Laden. A takfir, a
:20:10. > :20:13.
:20:13. > :20:16.takfiri. I'm certainly against that. Where does that leave you? You do
:20:16. > :20:20.get events in the Middle East and you write about them. You wrote a
:20:20. > :20:22.book about the second plane about five years ago which looked at the
:20:22. > :20:25.post-9/11 world. Given your concerns, when you look at a
:20:25. > :20:28.country like Tunisia which is now governed by a party that is
:20:28. > :20:30.Islamist or indeed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, or indeed
:20:31. > :20:39.maybe even Turkey with Recep Tayyip Erdogan - do you conclude that
:20:39. > :20:49.these governments are a long-term danger to your values in the West?
:20:49. > :20:50.
:20:50. > :20:53.No, I don't think the governments are. The Arab Spring is already
:20:53. > :20:59.looking like the Arab Winter. It is not at all surprising that
:20:59. > :21:02.democracy has not taken hold in the way we all hoped that it would. It
:21:02. > :21:12.is a foreign idea and it would take decades if not centuries to become
:21:12. > :21:17.the norm in the Arab world. I do not fear the governments, even if
:21:17. > :21:20.they are the Muslim Brotherhood. It is the individual. Recent outrages
:21:20. > :21:23.we have had, the Boston bombing for instance and Woolwich, the stabbing,
:21:23. > :21:33.seemed to me to come under the heading of what was called home-
:21:33. > :21:33.
:21:33. > :21:37.grown terrorism, where it is alienation that makes you act. You
:21:37. > :21:46.tart it up with a few slogans which you find online to make it look as
:21:46. > :21:50.though you are protesting against the invasion of Iraq. Before we end,
:21:50. > :21:56.I want to come back to your creative writing and your fiction.
:21:56. > :22:01.I know that you are working on a new novel about Auschwitz. That is
:22:01. > :22:11.a subject you have visited before. Does the creative process get
:22:11. > :22:14.
:22:14. > :22:24.harder? It does and it does not. What falls off is the flowing
:22:24. > :22:25.
:22:25. > :22:28.inspiration you have when you are younger. I know you have discussed
:22:29. > :22:31.this with one author and he said that most good books are written by
:22:32. > :22:36.people under 40. Presumably, he thinks that that is not an accident
:22:36. > :22:39.and maybe you agree with him. do lose that flow. But you gain in
:22:40. > :22:47.technique. You know more firmly what goes where and modulation and
:22:47. > :22:55.how to tell a story. Not as good a novelist but a better storyteller.
:22:55. > :22:58.Do you struggle to find new subjects? I know that - it is
:22:58. > :23:01.facile to say but when you have done a Holocaust book, you could
:23:02. > :23:11.say that if it has raised issues that you have looked at in other
:23:12. > :23:12.
:23:12. > :24:13.Apology for the loss of subtitles for 61 seconds
:24:14. > :24:16.state of England novels - are you Dickens died early as well as
:24:17. > :24:26.Shakespeare and Jane Austen, at 43, and the younger Bronte sister died
:24:27. > :24:35.
:24:35. > :24:38.at 30. Now Herrmann Walter is 97. You seem to be sure that in your
:24:38. > :24:41.lifetime, you cannot expect to be judged fairly about the quality of
:24:41. > :24:45.your work. You say that what really matters is whether you are being
:24:45. > :24:48.read in 50 years' time. Do you thank you will be in 50 years'
:24:48. > :24:56.time? That is why my eyes light up when I see young readers come to
:24:56. > :25:06.signings and readings and see 25 year-olds who have my book. I think
:25:06. > :25:10.that that is 50 years right there. You realise that all of the
:25:10. > :25:13.reviewing and even lit crit is mostly just rhetoric. There is no
:25:13. > :25:16.way of separating the excellent from the less excellent. The only
:25:16. > :25:26.thing which does that is time. You will not be around for that, as my
:25:26. > :25:27.
:25:27. > :25:30.father used to complain. It was no use to him, posterity. I think that
:25:30. > :25:34.that was just bravado. We all want to live on. That is partly why we
:25:34. > :25:41.have children. The desire for some kind of immortality is a very deep
:25:41. > :25:45.drive. In your case, it is the children and the books. Yes. As a
:25:45. > :25:55.way of continuing. Martin Amis, we have to end there. Thank you.
:25:55. > :26:17.
:26:17. > :26:24.You would be well-advised to keep an eye on the forecast. Some big
:26:24. > :26:28.changes coming up, especially in England and Wales. We will have hot,
:26:28. > :26:31.humid, thundery air. It is coming from France. Already overnight we
:26:31. > :26:37.could see some showery bursts developing in southern counties.
:26:37. > :26:43.Hit and miss, but some sharp ones possible. Most places will be dry
:26:43. > :26:49.with broken cloud the further north. single figures. A mild night,
:26:49. > :26:54.turning muggy in southern areas. Humidity developing. Some seem
:26:54. > :27:04.missed in the south-west. Through Tuesday, one band of showers Chris
:27:04. > :27:11.
:27:11. > :27:16.Froome England and Wales. Many places will avoid the rain, though.
:27:16. > :27:21.-- ships through England and Wales. We could see some downpours through
:27:21. > :27:27.south-east England. That threat increases towards the evening. 21
:27:27. > :27:32.his conservative. Mid-20s possible in some places. -- is Conservative.
:27:32. > :27:37.We will have a nice day. Not desperately warm. Mid-to-high teams.
:27:37. > :27:42.With light winds it could feel quite nice. -- mid-to-high teens.
:27:42. > :27:46.For Wales, we could have some showers drifting south to north.
:27:46. > :27:50.Plenty of dry weather in between. As there will be in the south-west.
:27:50. > :27:55.The threat of showers easing off. If you're heading to the beach it
:27:55. > :27:59.could be misty and murky. Into the evening, we have the increasing
:27:59. > :28:04.threat of showers in the south-east of England. That threat expands to
:28:04. > :28:08.other parts of England and Wales as this weather front continues to
:28:08. > :28:12.move further north. Don't take the detail to literally through the
:28:12. > :28:16.middle of the week. But in general terms it looks like England and
:28:16. > :28:20.Wales will see the highest temperatures, but also the highest
:28:20. > :28:25.humidity. That means heavy thundery downpours. In Scotland and Northern
:28:25. > :28:29.Ireland, not as hot and humid but drier and brighter. Don't take the
:28:29. > :28:34.detail too literally. We will have some bursts of rain, but hazy
:28:34. > :28:38.sunshine as well. The mid-to-high 20s in parts of the south-east.
:28:38. > :28:42.Cooler in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Looking further ahead, it
:28:42. > :28:46.doesn't look like the heat will last long. It looks like we could
:28:46. > :28:51.see some wet weather in England and Wales on Thursday. More persistent
:28:52. > :28:56.heavy thundery downpours. To her again, it will not be long before