Welcome to our regularly scheduled audio Ovaltine twenty minutes before you lower your lamp: it's Episode Sixteen of our vernal diversion by Anthony Trollope, The Fixed Period.
Thank you for your kind words about this and other SteynOnline features. Easter morn's latest video poem attracted a lot of comment, mainly because of its pertinence to our Covid world. Gareth Wigmore, a UK member of The Mark Steyn Club, says:
My favourite part of the Club - without the introduction and context these poems would forever be unknown to me and they are always very good.
Thank you, Gareth. I'm glad they're no longer unknown.
In the midst even of Easter rebirth, there is state-mandated death, at least in the Pacific on the Republic of Britannula. In tonight's episode of The Fixed Period President Neverbend is on the eve of triumph:
The moment had now come in which I might succeed. The first man was ready to go to the stake, and I had felt all along that the great difficulty would be in obtaining the willing assent of the first martyr. It might well be that these accusations of cruelty were a part of the suffering without which my great reform could not be carried to success. Though I should live to be accounted as cruel as Cæsar, what would that be if I too could reduce my Gaul to civilisation?
We are all Gaul and there a lot of would-be Caesars. If you're a member of The Mark Steyn Club you can hear Part Sixteen of our serialization of The Fixed Period simply by clicking here and logging-in. All previous episodes can be found here.
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