Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics, the weekly podcast with me, Steve Richards.

Well, welcome back. Thank you very much for tuning in again. We've all had a two-week break from each other.

I hope you had a good time, good rest from all your exertions

that you enact while listening to the podcast. And thank you, those of you who've continued to email.

Anyway, I had a good time. I'm still away, actually. I'm still, as I'm recording, in the great

northeast of England in county

Durham where we've been doing some beautiful walking and I've been up to the beyond

borders festival which I'm going to be referring to because I interview Jonathan

Powell up there Tony Blair's chief of staff throughout his time in number 10, partly about Afghanistan. So I'll tell you

about that in a moment or two. So as ever, we've got so much to cram in, this is what we're going

to do if it's okay with you. I'm going to reflect briefly on Afghanistan. I say briefly because

there are so many layers to this and I suspect we'll all be

reflecting on these different angles for weeks and months to come because it's a story that's not

going to go away. So I'm going to reflect briefly on one perspective and save the many others,

depressingly, for weeks to come. Then this is part two of the prime ministers we never had.

The book is coming out, the prime ministers we never had, this thursday so this is the final part of my

reflections on the podcast on the prime ministers uh we never had uh yeah this thursday 11 prime ministers

we never had 10 chapters two in one in one chapter. A bit about that. And then

your fantastic emails, they carried on coming in some really original. They're all original

and brilliant. But the two-week break we've all been having from each other has produced some inspiring emails

and we'll look at some of them. I'm sorry if your one isn't going to be read out this time.

It will be on another time. They've flowed in in their masses over August.

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