Just ahead of our ongoing Tale for Our Time, if you're one of that brave band who prefer me in visual formats, do check out today's Easter edition of our Sunday Poem. Kevin Smith, a First Week Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club from Oklahoma, writes:
Outstanding reading on your part. Thank you. The poem becomes richer with your commentary (Cats, writer's block, WW2, analogy to COVID response, and the capper -- Eliot's ashes, if you can get to them). One of your best.
Thank you very much, Kevin. And, with that, welcome to Part Fifteen of Anthony Trollope's lone venture into dystopian fiction: on a day of resurrection, this is a tale of state-mandated liquidation. In tonight's episode of The Fixed Period, President Neverbend drops in on the departing Englishmen's steam-yacht:
"Come and take some tiffin." An Englishman, when he comes to our side of the globe, always calls his lunch tiffin.
I went back to the other room with Lord Marylebone; and as I took my place at the table, I heard that the assembled cricketers were all discussing the Fixed Period.
"I'd be shot," said Mr Puddlebrane, "if they should deposit me, and bleed me to death, and cremate me like a big pig." Then he perceived that I had entered the saloon, and there came a sudden silence across the table.
I can't remember the last time anyone invited me to tiffin, other than an Indian chum doing it semi-parodically. It has lasted longer in the sub-continent, where schoolchildren take a daily tiffin-box rather than a lunch-box, than in other parts of the Empire.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Fifteen of The Fixed Period simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
If you've a friend who's a fan of classic literature and you want to give him or her a present with a difference, we hope you'll consider a one-year gift membership in The Mark Steyn Club. The lucky recipient will enjoy full access to our back catalogue of audio adventures and video poems - Conrad and Conan Doyle, Orwell and Orczy, Kipling and Kafka, and all the rest - which should keep you going until the next variant arrives from Wuhan, or at least until the Year Zero crowd has had all the books banned. For more details, see here.
Through the hell of 2022, our nightly audio adventure goes on, so do join me right back here tomorrow for The Fixed Period Part Sixteen, a few hours after the Easter Monday edition of The Mark Steyn Show.
