We're marking the fifth birthday of The Mark Steyn Club this weekend at SteynOnline. And, as part of the jubilations, we're presenting a quintet of anniversary audio programmes offering a year apiece from our first half-decade. If you've just joined our Club, this is a great way to riffle through the treasure trove of the Steyn archive. If you're a First Day Founding Member, these may be some items you missed first time round - or are certainly worth hearing again, as they stand the test of time.
This first special reprises some favourite moments from our first year, with Steyn on stage and screen, on wireless and website. There are substantive interview excerpts and throwaway jests, plus early examples of our live music specials, video poems and audio adventures. A theme of civilisational self-confidence runs through the hour, from Douglas Murray on The Strange Death of Europe to Rudyard Kipling's Recessional via Tunku Abdul Rahman on diversity. But there's also Mark riffing on Never Trumpers and the Big Jew Weather Machine; Tal Bachman singing a great Canadian song and the late Greg Ham from Men At Work on a great Australian song; an excerpt from our very first Tale for Our Time, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Tragedy of the Korosko, and Canadian free-speech heroine on how it's more fun on the right. Click above to listen.
If you're a First Weekend Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club, we thank you for signing on for our sixth year. But we thank all our johnnies-come-lately, too. David writes from the Franco-Swiss border.
I finally came on board late last year after some hesitation and it has been an absolute pleasure from day one. The daily comments section, even if I'm not always in agreement, have enriched my own views of the subjects being discussed, and the informed banter between the clubbers is always witty, lively and informative.
Culturally, the Sunday Poems section, in particular Kipling's Recessional and Gods of the Copybook Headings, along with Fontane's The Tragedy of Afghanistan have been personally very enriching. The stories told in these, and other poems in the section deserve to be heard, reflected upon, and not to be forgotten. Same thing for the audio books in the Tales for Our Time. Here, in this site, they continue to live and provide valuable lessons from the past to those willing to listen, a few of which, I can't help thinking, some of today's statue and culture destroyers could benefit from.
But let's not let them ruin the day. Happy 5th anniversary!
Thank you, David. If you liked my reading of Recessional, you'll enjoy the above show.
If you prefer to read your radio shows, Steyn Club members can peruse the transcripts here. For the full archive of our audio shows in a handy Netflix-style tile format, please see here.
The Mark Steyn Show is a production of The Mark Steyn Club. As Mark always says, Club membership isn't for everyone, but it if you're interested you can find more information here. On our fifth birthday, if you've waited a while to see whether we're in it for the long haul, yes, we are - and membership does come with benefits:
*Exclusive Steyn Store member pricing on over 40 books, CDs and other products;
*The opportunity to engage in Clubland Q&A sessions with yours truly (our anniversary edition aired yesterday);
*Our monthly series of audio adventures Tales for Our Time. As mentioned above, we started with Mark's serialization of Conan Doyle's timelier than ever Tragedy of the Korosko, and moved on through Jane Austen, Jack London, Conrad, Kipling, Dickens, Gogol, Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Prisoner of Zenda, The Thirty-Nine Steps, The Scarlet Pimpernel and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. You can either listen to an episode per night, as we aired them originally, or you can binge-listen to the lot on a long car journey;
*Audio versions of our video content, and transcript versions of our audio content: For those who find it less stressful not to have to look at Steyn, we've made The Mark Steyn Show available in non-visual form. If you go here, you'll find that we've already posted audio episodes of every single SteynPost all the way back to the very first one, plus some of our long-form shows, which we're also working our way through;
*Comment Club membership: you get to frolic and gambol through our comments section and take issue with Mark and his columns and radio shows and TV appearances. He weighs in there himself from time to time, but it's essentially your turf where you get to take the rhetorical baseball bat to any cut of his jib that happens to rankle. There's a lot of good stuff in there;
*His video series on classic poetry;
*Advance booking for his live appearances around the world, assuming such things are ever again permitted to take place;
*Customized email alerts for new content in your areas of interest (arts, politics, culture, or the whole shebang);
*and, most importantly, the opportunity to support all our content, from the Big Picture stuff on Islam and climate change and civilizational collapse to the small pleasures of good conversation, great movies and live music.
To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, or to sign up a friend, please click here. Thank you for a terrific and spectacular five years. There will be many more anniversaries to come.
