Red Széll

And when you're transported into that story, even though you're learning something very complex, possibly very alien to you, you know, I've never worn woad or a codpiece.

But it's kind of, you do feel, as you say, in safe hands.

Oh, yes, absolutely.

The kind of the old authorial voice.

And, you know, every so often I'll interview an author like that and I'll just think, you know, well, you must have studied English or, you know, had a classical education of some description.

I think some people are just great listeners.

And I think that's what

That's where an authenticity and authorial voice can come from.

If the author is listening to the world around them, picking up on the different rhythms of the people who he or she is interacting with and reflecting that, it's not just as if they're holding up an MP3 recorder and recording around them.

But they're taking in all the voices, the feelings, the cadences around them, and they're filtering them into a story that they feel is important and archetypal.

And there is a real pleasure in that.

Happy New Year to you as well, Jacob.

Thank you very much for having me back on the show.

Yeah, I had a fantastic Christmas.

Thank you very much.

I didn't actually have to run away from my family so much as wait for them to come back to the house.

Christmas television show for the BBC and one of my daughters had just started a new job in publishing and the other one lives up in the north of England and hadn't finished her studies.

So I had the most fantastic week before Christmas, curled up a bit like you on the sofa with some books that I've been aching to read.

And absolutely top of my list, the first one that I grabbed on my iPod was The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton.

Now, anybody who doesn't know Stuart Turton, who is the author of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The Devil in the Deep Water, really needs to listen to one of the first episodes of