Hello, this June I published my sixth book. It's called, as you probably know by now,

1923 and it is extremely close to my heart. It tells a story of what happened to me during

the Covid lockdowns when the world shut down around us. That was when a mysterious role

of projected film from a hundred years ago came into my possession which in itself was quite

a long story. What followed was an immersive journey into a lost world of the riders of

a distant, merciless tour de France and their sometimes brutal fates as they race through

a Europe that was simultaneously cooling down after the conflagration of the Great War while at the same time

firing the starting pistol for the next chapter in its own destruction. But alongside that,

the summer of 1923 is a time of insane and bewildering creativity across the continent.

Pitched into this cultural and political maelstrom is one mysterious Flemish rider,

whose life I start to uncover and whose descendants I seek to contact in the real world.

This is a love story to the Tour de France, told a century too late, an avalanche of discoveries

that became my sole purpose and my sustaining mission. It's called 1923, the mystery of

lot 212 in the Tour de France obsession and it's out on June 22nd but available to pre-order

from all the usual places.

June Elephilippe's birthday, today, and he was 31. Is that right? Or was he 32?

He was 31. So we had this discussion before because it's his 31st birthday. Does that cat

rise when it's the 31-year-old rider this year? So now he is.

Anyone out on a classic Elephalee go out and celebrate my birthday. Elephalee fashion.

He ripped up the whole race basically. It was a very strong, he dragged out Chaconis and others.

He's right, his presence kind of shaped the race and the whole thing.

It's actually raced from the very minute he attacked to the very end. It was kind of in the shadow

...