Eagerly read book, maybe, on republican leader over hours inside? (6)
I believe the answer is:
devour
'eagerly read book' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are verbs in their base form, I can't see how one could define the other.
'on republican leader over hours inside?' is the wordplay.
'on republican leader over' becomes 'dev' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'inside?' says to take the centre (I've seen 'inside' mean this).
The middle letters of 'hours' are 'our'.
'dev'+'our'='DEVOUR'
'maybe' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for devour that I've seen before include "Eat (food) quickly" , "Eat (food) hungrily" , "Eat greedily" , "Eat hungrily and quickly" , "Guzzle" .)