Last weekend, after a protracted absence due to my various health issues, Tales for Our Time returned with a classic and highly apposite short story by Edgar Allan Poe: The Masque of the Red Death. If you've yet to hear it, you'll find it here.
That was just my way of dipping a toe into the water, and seeing whether my decrepit self was up to it. As far as I can tell, it doesn't seem to have brought on a stroke or anything, so time to dip the other nine toes in. That's to say:
Welcome to the sixty-second audio adventure in our series Tales for Our Time - and our second venture into the work of the world's bestselling author, Agatha Christie. If you enjoyed my serialisation of Dame Agatha's first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, I hope you'll want to check out her second - The Secret Adversary, first published in 1922.
As I explain in my introduction, what I like about these early entries to her vast oeuvre is the way that, unlike the later work once Poirot and Miss Marple were globally famous, these tales are rooted in a strong sense of time and place - in this case, the Great War and the social disruptions it set in motion, bringing down all the great empires - German, Russian, Habsburg, Ottoman... In a world turned upside down, why should the British be immune?
And so we begin, with a chance encounter aboard the ill-fated Lusitania:
He stood looking at her with a kind of desperate irresolution.
"It must be!" he muttered to himself. "Yes—it is the only way." Then aloud he said abruptly: "You are an American?"
"Yes."
"A patriotic one?"
The girl flushed.
"I guess you've no right to ask such a thing! Of course I am!"
"Don't be offended. You wouldn't be if you knew how much there was at stake. But I've got to trust some one—and it must be a woman."
"Why?"
"Because of 'women and children first.'"
And thus a great adventure is underway...
To hear me read the first part of The Secret Adversary, Mark Steyn Club members should please click here and log-in.
~Thank you for all your kind comments on the return of Tales for Our Time. Nancy Knowlton, a Michigan member of the Steyn Club, writes:
I'm glad to see Tales are back. Thank you, Mark. The first tale I listened to was Nineteen Eighty Four. Wow! I was hooked. Such a great presentation! Then I listened to many of the Tales, one after the other.
Nicola Timmerman, from francophone eastern Ontario, agrees:
So thrilled more Tales back!
So says California Steyn Clubber Jeff Estes:
Glad you're back in the saddle Mark!
And fellow member Hank from Pittsburgh:
At long last...............WELCOME BACK MARK!
Thank you for that. We have all kinds of tales in our archives, from the leisurely comedy of Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat to P G Wodehouse with a social conscience in Psmith, Journalist - oh, and some fusty notions of honor and duty in a certain other fellow's The Prisoner of Windsor. Tales for Our Time in all its variety is both highly relevant and a welcome detox from the madness of the hour: over six years' worth of my audio adaptations of classic fiction starting with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's cracking tale of an early conflict between jihadists and westerners in The Tragedy of the Korosko. To access them all, please see our easy-to-navigate Netflix-style Tales for Our Time home page. We've introduced a similar tile format for my Sunday Poems and also for our Hundred Years Ago Show.
We launched The Mark Steyn Club nearly seven years ago, and I'm overwhelmed by all those members across the globe who've signed up to be a part of it - from Fargo to Fiji, Vancouver to Vanuatu, Cook County to the Cook Islands, West Virginia to the West Midlands. As I said at the time, membership isn't for everyone, but it is a way of ensuring that all our content remains available for everyone.
That said, we are offering our Club members a few extras, including our monthly audio adventures by Dickens, Conrad, Kafka, Gogol, Jane Austen, H G Wells, Louisa May Alcott, George Orwell, Baroness Orczy, Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Louis Stevenson - plus a couple of pieces of non-classic fiction by yours truly. You can find them all here. We're very pleased by the response to our Tales - and we even do them live occasionally, and sometimes with special guests.
I'm truly thrilled that one of the most popular of our Steyn Club extras these last six-plus years has been our nightly radio serials. If you've enjoyed them and you're looking for a present for a fellow fan of classic fiction, I hope you'll consider our special Club Gift Membership. Aside from Tales for Our Time, The Mark Steyn Club does come with other benefits:
~Exclusive Steyn Store member pricing on over 40 books, mugs, T-shirts, and other products;
~The chance to engage in live Clubland Q&A sessions with yours truly, such as yesterday's;
~Transcript and audio versions of The Mark Steyn Show and our other video content;
~My video series of classic poetry;
~Booking for special members-only events, such as The Mark Steyn Christmas Show, assuming I'm ever again up to such demanding events;
~Advance booking for my live appearances around the world, assuming likewise;
~Customized email alerts for new content in your areas of interest;
~and the opportunity to support our print, audio and video ventures as they wing their way around the planet.
To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and don't forget that special Gift Membership. As soon as you join, you'll get access not only to The Secret Adversary but to all the other yarns gathered together at the Tales for Our Time home page.
One other benefit to membership is our Comment Club privileges. So, if you think The Secret Adversary is a bust, feel free to have at it.
And do join us tomorrow evening for Part Two of our Christie caper, and every night circa 7pm North American Eastern/midnight British Summer Time thereafter.
