Just ahead of the latest episode of our monthly audio adventure for members of The Mark Steyn Club, let me remind those either still in lockdown or barricaded because of social-justice predators that there are worse ways of distracting yourself from the hell of the present than by exploring the delights of our Tales for Our Time home page. It's configured in Netflix tile style, with the stories organized by category - thrillers, fantasy, romance, etc - which we hope will make it easy for you to find a favorite diversion of an evening. If it doesn't, please let us know. Martha, a brand new Steyn Club member from British Columbia's capital city, is enjoying The Prisoner of Windsor so far:
Continue to enjoy this adventure. Terrific portrayals of Trudeau, Thunberg and Macron.
Steady on, Martha. We don't want to get too roman à clef about things. In particular, the talismanic moppet I have some longer-term plans for.
If, like Martha, you're new to the Club, you can access more than three dozen of our cracking yarns here - and all previous episodes of our current adventure, The Prisoner of Windsor, here. And with that welcome to Part Eleven of my contemporary inversion of Anthony Hope's classic The Prisoner of Zenda. In tonight's instalment, the British prime minister has questioned whether it's correct to say that Islam has nothing to do with terrorism, declared that on balance the British Empire was a good thing, and suggested it might be time to cut funding for wind farms. So naturally his cabinet colleagues think he has mental health issues:
'Anna Bersonin said there was a new paper in Nature by Dr Mann showing that these are all symptoms of Corona syndrome.'
'Hang on,' I said. 'Don't you mean Coronavirus?'
Severn explained that it had been discovered about the same time as the last Coronavirus and accidentally been given a similar name, but it was a separate condition – prevalent among white males given to dogmatic pronouncements deriving from their unshakeable belief in their divine right to exercise power over others. Hence the name – 'corona', as in the Latin for 'crown', as in thinking you were a king. A short-lived populist deputy prime minister in an Italian coalition government had apparently died of it.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Eleven of The Prisoner of Windsor simply by clicking here and logging-in.
If you've yet to hear any of our Tales for Our Time, you can do so by joining The Mark Steyn Club and enjoy our nightly audio adventures every evening twenty minutes before lowering your lamp - or hoard the episodes and binge-listen at the weekend or on a long car journey, if your government still permits you to take one. For more details on that and other benefits to Steyn Club membership, see here - and don't forget our special Gift Membership.
Please join me right here tomorrow evening for another episode of The Prisoner of Windsor.