Programming note: I'll be doing double-duty on Serenade Radio tomorrow, Sunday, hosting the pre-dawn broadcast of Mark Steyn on the Town at 5am British Summer Time - that's 12 midnight Eastern/9pm Pacific on Sunday in North America - and back with Steyn's Song of the Week at the other end of the day: 5.30pm London/12.30pom New York. You can listen from almost anywhere on the planet by clicking the button at top right here.
~On this the seventh birthday of The Mark Steyn Club, I thank all our First Week Founding Members from 2017 who've enthusiastically re-upped for our eighth season. Glen Flint, a First Fortnight Steyn Clubber from Nebraska, joined up because of Tales for Our Time, but is finding some of the arcana of this one a little befuddling:
Hi Mark,
Enjoying The Secret Adversary immensely.
What is a bradshaw? Does it complement an ABC? Something like a mimosa for breakfast?
All the best!
Glen
Yeah, I probably should have explained that one for Americans an episode or two back:
I took up a telegram to No. 891—the lady was there. She opened it and gave a gasp, and then she said, very jolly like: 'Bring me up a Bradshaw, and an A.B.C., and look sharp, Henry.' My name isn't Henry, but...
A Bradshaw would make a rather good cocktail, Glen. I think of it as something John O'Sullivan would order in a dark wood-panelled bar and then send back because it hadn't been mixed quite to his satisfaction.
Alas, it is, in fact, like an ABC, a railway guide. Bradshaw's Guide to railway timetables started in 1839 with Great Britain and Ireland, and quickly spread to the Continent and much of the Empire, although not the United States. They lasted until the Sixties - just. The ABC came along in 1853 and managed to hang on until 2007 - which I find astonishing, as I regard it as a far inferior product to Bradshaw.
Today the term survives, as far as I'm aware, only in the sub-continent, where the railway timetables are called the Newman Indian Bradshaw. But the once instantly recognisable word lives on in a fair few of the books we serialise here. From The Riddle of the Sands:
'Hullo, Carruthers, you here? Thought you had got away long ago... Carter, bring me a Bradshaw'—(an extraordinary book, Bradshaw, turned to from habit, even when least wanted, as men fondle guns and rods in the close season).
Lot of truth to that.
But put away the Bradshaw, and get ready for Part Twenty-Three of our latest Tale for Our Time: it's a rare Agatha Christie adventure set against the turbulent politics of the time, the early 1920s. In tonight's episode of The Secret Adversary, Tommy and his American chum Julius have tracked down the missing papers, on the outskirts of Holyhead:
"It's the goods all right. Sewn up in oilskin. Hold it while I get my penknife."
The unbelievable had happened. Tommy held the precious packet tenderly between his hands. They had succeeded!
Or have they? Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Twenty-Three of our adventure simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
If you've only joined our club during our recent seventh-birthday festivities and missed our earlier serials (Conan Doyle's The Tragedy of the Korosko, H G Wells' The Time Machine, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, plus Kipling, Dickens, Gogol, Kafka, Conrad, Baroness Orczy, Louisa May Alcott, John Buchan, L M Montgomery, Scott Fitzgerald, Victor Hugo and more), you can find them all here in an easily accessible Netflix-style tile format.
If you have friends who might appreciate Tales for Our Time, we have a special Steyn Club Gift Membership that lets them in on that and all the other fun in The Mark Steyn Club. To become a member, please click here.
Please join me tomorrow for Part Twenty-Four of The Secret Adversary.
