Red Széll

If he's given me a roadmap at the beginning, I expect to be able to take the roadmap without hitting traffic jams of...

clever words beautiful adjectives make the words count make the paragraphs count and leave me feeling like i've spent time with an incisive mind the roadmap thing is pretty unique to non-fiction as well and that kind of goes into one of the do's i want to talk about and that's have a purpose no

Exactly.

That's right.

Just stick to that.

Tell me.

I read a fantastic biography of the African emperor, the only black African emperor that Rome had.

by a guy called Simon Elliott.

It was the first episode of this year, the first episode of My Life in Books.

And, you know, you'll hear from the interview, he sticks to the point.

Yeah, there's a load of information in there.

It's a 320-page book.

But at the end of the day, he's making the case that this man, Septimius Severus...

who was born in the second century AD, was the African emperor, the black emperor.

And everything led back to this central pillar, the spine of the book, if you like.

And I came away thinking, well, I've really learned something without being led down endless side passages.

Exactly.

Now, the why is because the richest part of the Roman emperor at that time in 150 AD, 160 AD, was what we now call the Maghreb, the north of Africa.

Septimius Severus was born in Libya.

He came from rich and powerful people.