I shook hands with the man who nearly killed me

Life Changing

BBC

Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.6 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It was a summer evening in 2014, when four men barged into Paul Kohler’s family home and began a savage assault on him. They believed erroneously that he had a large amount of money hidden there. The speed of the police response meant that Paul was saved from almost certain death, and the four men were later arrested, charged and imprisoned. Although he felt vindicated by the sentencing, Paul’s worldview was changed forever when he and his family were invited to visit one of the attackers in prison, as part of a Restorative Justice scheme. In an episode recorded in front of a live audience at the Hay Literary Festival, Paul tells Dr Sian Williams about that Life Changing confrontation, and how frustration with the way his ordeal was reported led to him into politics. Producer: Tom Alban

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:07.4	This is the story of a book.
0:09.8	It's a wonderful book.
0:10.9	She's an immensely valuable writer.
0:13.1	Award winning, commercially and critically successful.
0:16.6	Then, cancelled.
0:18.3	It just infuriates me.
0:19.9	You're reinforcing stereotypes.
0:21.9	I remember feeling sick by page 8.
0:24.5	A culture war about race, class, and who has the right to say what?
0:28.9	I do not think that I wrote in any way a racist book.
0:32.7	Shadow World, anatomy of a cancellation.
0:35.5	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:37.3	You're about to listen to Life-changing.
0:39.6	Episodes will be released weekly wherever you get your podcasts.
0:43.4	But if you're in the UK, you can listen to the latest episodes first on BBC Sounds.
0:50.7	Welcome to Life-Changing, which may sound a little different today, because we're in a tent on the Welsh borders at the Hay Literary Festival.
1:00.0	Hello, Hay!
1:01.0	Hello!
1:02.0	In very good spirits, and hello, of course, to you at home too.
1:10.0	A different setting then, but the premise remains the same.
1:14.1	A guest with an extraordinary story about a moment in life which transforms everything.
	...

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