It's a piece of writing so desperately honest, so full of warmth and unease and emotional daring, that you can't help but be pulled along.
Unlike his French and German contemporaries, his designs, indebted to the simplest Chippendale, Biedermeier, and Far Eastern styles and, particularly, to the furniture of the American Shakers, had an honest, sophisticated charm and warmth achieved through craftsmanship (a stark contrast to strictly machine-made products) without drawing attention to an obvious handmade look.
And let's be honest, there is a particular warmth in the north.
"An innocent," M. F. K. Fisher once wrote, "will do the most God-awful thing with his meals, and manage by some alchemy of warmth and understanding to make any honest gourmet pleased and easy at his table".
Taking the spotlight – suffering the scrutiny until I began to feel its warmth – felt like a direct and honest way to receive attention; something I can practice, with my clothes on, in my life.
He never quite tells the truth, but Sarsgaard plays him as a sensitive man who has genuine warmth and a gift that even an honest man may lack: he's always plausible.
His warmth of personality and his passion for honest debate about the Christian faith led to him speaking to a packed cathedral and full churches across his diocese and beyond.
Warmth involves whether we view others to be honest, trustworthy, kind or friendly, while competence relates to whether they seem capable, intelligent or skilled.
(The script is by Michael Tolkin and the late Anthony Minghella, whose 1999 film, "The Talented Mr. Ripley," about foreigners dying to be sucked into Italy's warmth, and only half succeeding, was a far more honest approach to cultural fusion. Just think what Minghella might have wrought at the helm of "Nine").
