He brings a man back (4)
I believe the answer is:
noel
'he' is the definition.
'brings a man back' is the wordplay.
'brings' becomes 'leo' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'a man' becomes 'N' (knight, a man in chess).
'back' shows that the letters should be reversed in order.
'leo'+'n'='leon'
'leon' back-to-front is 'NOEL'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for noel that I've seen before include "A lone sort of Christmas" , "Christmastime" , "Season around the 25th December" , "Girl - boy - Christmas" , "Feature of last month" .)