When he gets to Damascus, he's surprised to find the meeting isn't at the palace, but it's at Bashar's apartment in town, and he's ushered into a library room.

And Bashar then walks in just by himself and greets me, shakes my hand, and first thing I notice is he's got quite a sweaty hand.

And I'm thinking he's clearly a little bit nervous about meeting me or something.

And so I didn't even have to go to my mental map at this stage because we sat down and I immediately get, like, a 40-minute monologue from Bashar as to why, uh, having a relationship with the UK is important, that he spent two years working in the UK, his wife is British.

It's during that meeting that she says something to Brooks that he's never known what to make of.

So she said, she s- I think she was talking about democracy and openness and stuff like that.

I said, "Well, you know, if you want democracy, surely you need to create some form of succession." And she says, well, she says something like, "I hope that, you know, if my husband does one or two more terms, then that will be it, and he will then be able to pass over to somebody else to take over." I, I got the sense from her that she didn't want her husband to be president forever.