If you wanted to chew the fat with two writers of substance who've interesting things to say about this place and where it fits in the wider political landscape, when would be a better time to do it than Book Week.

So that's what we're doing on this week's red line, simple as that.

Glenn Patterson and Brian McGilloway are with me.

And they've both written books and articles galore about the people and the politics and the place that is Northern Ireland,

Ireland, Britain, Belfast, London, Derry, Derry, whatever, and however you want to think of it.

Welcome to both of you. Thanks very much indeed for joining us.

That sounded like the whole programme, just by that intro there.

I've encapsulated what I hope the programme is going to be in the next 25 or 30 minutes.

So don't disappoint me, gentlemen, please.

Glenn, let's just start with you.

You published your latest book last week, in fact.

The last Irish question, Will Six into 26 ever go?

Turned out to be a bit of a lockdown project for you.

What's the premise?

Well, I had published a book at the end of 2019

called Backstop Land. It came out on the 31st of October 2019. It was actually the only thing

that came out in the 31st of October 2019 in the end. My publishers had thought, had believed

that the Conservative Party really meant

it when they said that they were going to bring Britain out of the European Union on the 31st of

October. So just me in backstop, land, really, were out on the 31st. And when I heard about the

11 month transition period on the 1st of February 2020, I thought, well, that might be a good time to try something else, you know, just to pick up some of the questions that had been left hanging when I was writing backstop land.

And so I thought I would spend 11 months getting around as much of Ireland as possible and talking to people and asking them this question about whether six into 26 would go anytime soon.

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