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 most recent Mark Steyn Show, with Michele Bachmann, Eva Vlaardingerbroek and John O'Sullivan discussing globalism versus sovereignty. Michele, Eva and John were all on cracking form.
And, with that, welcome to Part Fifteen of our summer diversion - my variation on a theme of H G Wells. Michael Trueblood, a First Month Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club, is struggling to keep up:
I've now listened through Part V. Capital! Capital!
Alas, Michael, after Episode Five, it's all downhill.
In tonight's episode of Out of Time, our Victorian time-traveller attempts to interfere with time in order to save Weena:
So Ahmed said, "Great! We can all go to the statue-toppling."
Statue-toppling? London was strewn with so many empty plinths I found it hard to credit there was any statue that still needed toppling.
But this time, said Theo, it was the Trafalgar Triggerer himself: The bronze of General Napier in the south-west corner of the square was scheduled to be torn down.
"Sir Charles Napier?" I said. "That cannot be right. He merits that statue for his splendid dispatch to headquarters on his subjugation of the Sindh. We all loved that joke at Morley's: 'Peccavi'!" My old schoolboy self giggled at the thought of it.
They stared at me blankly.
"'Peccavi': 'I have sinned.' I have Sindh! It's a pun. In Latin."
The stares were colder. Devon snapped: "It's Latinx. For God's sake, everybody knows that."
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Fifteen of Out of Time simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
If you've a friend who's a fan of audio fiction 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 almost one hundred classic 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 blows in 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 2023, our nightly audio adventure goes on, so do join me right back here tomorrow for Episode Sixteen of Out of Time.