Red Széll

And that softens his sort of hard carapace that he's developed around himself.

And you begin to see him integrating back into the community that

he's been part of throughout his life and soften the edges around him and rediscover why it's worth living.

And also you understand why he's become the man that he's become.

And it's a heartwarming and heartbreaking book.

And I wept buckets and I laughed like a drain whilst I was reading this book.

I think maybe, you know, I'm a man in my 50s.

Maybe I've become a bit of a grumpy old man.

I believe that things were better back in the 1990s.

But it just it really struck a chord with me.

And I think it's one of the nicest books I've read for a long time.

It's a book about second chances, isn't it?

Exactly, yes.

Well, my next book is also written by an author who you interviewed last year, and it's David Solloy's Flesh.

Flesh.

Which I did promise in our last conversation that I would take off my bedside table and read.

And I have to confess, it is the one book of the five that I read over Christmas that I have not finished.

Because quite frankly, I found it pretty hard going.

Why?

Well, for anybody who doesn't know what it's about, it's about a young Hungarian man who moves from rural poverty...