This week's guest is The Guardian's John Crace, writer of satirical parliamentary sketches, as well as a personal diary column. For a long time John also wrote the paper's Digested Read, in which each week, he summed up a new book in a few funny paragraphs. He's published several books himself, on topics as varied as football, cricket and Shakespeare, as well as collections of his columns, including the new A Farewell to Calm, which is out on 4 November. I visit John at his home in south London and nose around his study (which is full of interesting things), and he talks about the inner workings of a politics sketch; what it's like to be a journalist at Westminster, and navigating anxiety and depression alongside a demanding job. Pre-order A Farewell to Calm and browse other books by John Crace in the In Writing shop: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/in-writing Read John's politics sketches here: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/johncrace and his piece on recovering from heroin addiction here: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/mar/25/how-i-overcame-my-heroin-addiction-and-started-to-live And listen to his wonderful episode of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day here: https://howtofail.podbean.com/e/how-to-fail-john-crace/

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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