Depending on where you are in the world, shows and movies and suchlike may still be constrained by the Covid commissars, but here at SteynOnline, through the Permanent Abnormal, the lights stay on. We're very proud that this website now offers more free content than at any time in our eighteen-year history. But we also provide some premium extras especially for our Mark Steyn Club members, such as these nightly adaptations of classic fiction and our Sunday Poems.
This weekend's verse prompted this from Lynn Foster, a First Day Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club and my fellow Ontarian:
Well that made me laugh out loud ...perfect and quite unexpected!
Thank you, Lynn. Glad you feel that way - and, for those who haven't seen it, I hope you'll check it out on Lynn's recommendation.
In tonight's episode of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, Henry Tilney gives her a preview of her bedroom at the abbey:
"After a very short search, you will discover a division in the tapestry so artfully constructed as to defy the minutest inspection, and on opening it, a door will immediately appear—which door, being only secured by massy bars and a padlock, you will, after a few efforts, succeed in opening—and, with your lamp in your hand, will pass through it into a small vaulted room."
"No, indeed; I should be too much frightened to do any such thing."
"What! Not when Dorothy has given you to understand that there is a secret subterraneous communication between your apartment and the chapel of St Anthony, scarcely two miles off? Could you shrink from so simple an adventure? No, no, you will proceed into this small vaulted room, and through this into several others, without perceiving anything very remarkable in either. In one perhaps there may be a dagger, in another a few drops of blood, and in a third the remains of some instrument of torture; but there being nothing in all this out of the common way, and your lamp being nearly exhausted, you will return towards your own apartment..."
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Seventeen of Northanger Abbey simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
If you enjoy me in audio, you might like to know that we complement Tales for Our Time at the other end of the day with an audio edition of The Mark Steyn Show. The latest episode airs tomorrow, Wednesday. Hope you'll tune in.
Membership in The Mark Steyn Club is not for everyone, but, if you've a pal who enjoys classic fiction, we'd love to welcome him or her to our ranks via the birthday present that lasts all year: A gift membership in the Steyn Club, which comes with access to our entire archive of Tales for Our Time, including Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Time Machine and many more. For more details on our special Gift Membership, see here. And please join me tomorrow evening for Part Eighteen of Northanger Abbey.