We hope our UK listeners had a grand Bank Holiday Monday. Notwithstanding statutory federal holidays, the lights stay on at SteynOnline, especially upon the occasion of The Mark Steyn Club's seventh birthday.Thank you for all your kind comments on our anniversary - and thank you to our First Day Founding Members for enthusiastically signing up for an eighth year. We certainly hope, in the days ahead, that our First Week Founding Members will want to do the same. Jennie and Terry write from Littlehampton in the English Home Counties:
HAPPY SEVENTH BIRTHDAY to the MSC and may you and we have many many more of your fascinating shows. This one had the best, my vintage lovely music full volume and repeated back to back.
Good health and good luck next month. Will hope to be standing outside the King's Bench to spook the Ofcom gits with some bad vibes.
Thank you, Jennie and Terry - and here's to spooking the Ofcom gits. Bart Nielsen, a Wisconsin Steyn Clubber, says:
Day Three founding member here. Would have been Hour One if I hadn't been at sea at the time.
This is my must visit site every day for so many reasons, not least of which is Tales for Our Time. You have so broadened my American public school educated horizons with your oeuvre.....
Anyway, here's to another 137 years of the Mark Steyn Club.
I'll do my best, Bart. Maureen in Massachusetts adds:
Thank you for the opportunity to renew. I am so proud to be a First Week Founding Member (and Liberty Stick owner.)
Much appreciated, Maureen. Without those Liberty Sticks, I'm not sure I'd have been able to afford a month-long trial at DC hotel rates.
Meanwhile, welcome to tonight's episode of our latest Tale for Our Time - my audio serialisation of Agatha Christie's second published novel The Secret Adversary. In the midst of his forcible confinement, Tommy has his troubles lightened by a charming demoiselle:
The door swung open... It was not Conrad who entered, but a girl. She carried a tray which she set down on the table.
In the feeble light of the gas burner Tommy blinked at her. He decided at once that she was one of the most beautiful girls he had ever seen. Her hair was a full rich brown, with sudden glints of gold in it as though there were imprisoned sunbeams struggling in its depths. There was a wild-rose quality about her face. Her eyes, set wide apart, were hazel, a golden hazel that again recalled a memory of sunbeams.
A delirious thought shot through Tommy's mind.
"Are you Jane Finn?" he asked breathlessly.
The girl shook her head wonderingly.
"My name is Annette, monsieur."
But is she friend or foe? If you're a member of The Mark Steyn Club you can hear Part Eighteen of our serialisation of The Secret Adversary simply by clicking here and logging-in. All previous episodes can be found here.
~Even on our seventh birthday, we acknowledge that membership in the Steyn Club is not for everyone, but it helps keep all our content out there for everyone - in print, audio, video, around the world, and hopefully changing a mind or two here and there. And, aside from Tales for Our Time, being a Steyn Club member does come with a few other benefits:
~Exclusive Steyn Store member pricing on over forty books, CDs and other items in the Steyn store;
~The opportunity to engage in live Q&A sessions with yours truly, such as this coming Wednesday's;
~Transcript and audio versions of our video content, such as Mark's Mailbox and The Mark Steyn Show;
~Comment Club privileges;
~Our weekend series of video poetry and other specials;
~Advance booking for my live appearances around the world, if I'm ever again healthy enough to make any;
~Customised 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 world.
To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and don't forget our special Gift Membership. Once your chum is signed up, he or she will get full access to our entire archive of Tales for Our Time, including Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Time Machine, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and much more. For more details on our special Gift Membership, see here.
And do join me tomorrow for the nineteenth episode of The Secret Adversary.