Welcome to the penultimate episode of The Prisoner of Windsor, The Mark Steyn Club's latest Tale for Our Time and a sequel-cum-contemporary inversion of Anthony Hope's Ruritanian runaway hit of 1894. Thank you for all your kind comments on this summer diversion. Martha, a Steyn Clubber from Victoria (British Columbia, not Oz), enjoyed the sword fight with a homicidal Home Secretary at Cymbeline's Castle:
Well done Mark. That was a terrific rock 'em, sock 'em episode. Great fun.
Thank you, Martha. We've tried to keep the rock 'em/sock 'em going all the way through. In tonight's episode, the dispossessed Rudy Elphberg finally gets to see a real coronation that he himself has been denied:
The King advanced up the nave, his train borne by half-a-dozen pages of honour selected via a Coronation reality show to reflect various "communities". Diverse as they were, all six boys were uniformly solemn of mien and with a tendency to overstep. It was oddly moving as they walked stiffly in His Majesty's wake toward the steps to the Coronation chair. "Vivat Rex!" sang the King's Scholars. His Majesty and his pages bowed to the altar, and the Archbishop of Canterbury stepped forward. He looked like an Old Testament prophet with a great thick beard hanging halfway down his robes, and I had high expectations of serious fire-and-brimstone, but he spoke in a thin, camp voice...
To listen to the thirty-second episode of The Prisoner of Windsor, please click here and log-in. If you're late getting started on this current Tale, you'll find the story so far here.
Tales for Our Time is an experimental feature we introduced as a bonus for Mark Steyn Club members, and, as you know, I said if it was a total stinkeroo, we'd eighty-six the thing and speak no more of it. But I'm thrilled to say it's proved very popular, and is now in its fourth season. If you're a Club member and you incline more to the stinkeroo side of things, give it your best in the Comments Section below. And do join me tomorrow evening for the conclusion of The Prisoner of Windsor.