Programming note: Join Steyn tomorrow, Saturday, for a Bastille Day edition of his Serenade Radio show, On the Town. The fun starts at 5pm British Summer Time - which is 6pm in Western Europe/12 midday North American Eastern. You can listen from almost anywhere on the planet by clicking the button at top right here.
~Welcome to the sixty-fourth audio adventure in our series Tales for Our Time - and our first venture into the world of Bulldog Drummond, the creation of "Sapper" - a pseudonym for H C McNeile.
As I explain in my introduction, this entry to our catalogue was prompted by our recent Agatha Christie tale, The Secret Adversary, and its strong evocation of the years after the Great War and the upheavals it set in motion, upending all the Continental empires - German, Russian, Habsburg, Ottoman... In a world turned upside down, why should England be immune?
And so we begin, at a rather unusual gathering in Switzerland:
"Well, gentlemen," said the Count, "before we sit down to dinner, I may perhaps be permitted to say a few words of introduction. The nations of the world have recently been engaged in a performance of unrivalled stupidity. As far as one can tell that performance is now over. The last thing I wish to do is to discuss the war—except in so far as it concerns our meeting here to-night. Mr. Hocking is an American, you two gentlemen are Germans. I"—the Count smiled slightly—"have no nationality... Gentlemen, the war was waged by idiots, and when idiots get busy on a large scale, it is time for clever men to step in... That is the raison d'être for this little dinner.... I claim that we four men are sufficiently international to be able to disregard any stupid and petty feelings about this country and that country, and to regard the world outlook at the present moment from one point of view and one point of view only..."
And thus a great adventure is underway...
To hear me read the first part of Bulldog Drummond, Mark Steyn Club members should please click here and log-in.
~Thank you for all your kind comments our last Tale for Our Time - The Shadow by Hans Christian Andersen. California Steyn Clubber Anna Niemann says:
Such a strange and sad story dear Mark...Your reading was top-notch, your voice of the shadow was genuinely scary and I am glad to have heard this previously unknown-to-me Hans Christian Andersen story...
Chicago member Mia De Santis is also on board:
Thank you, Mark! What a great reading and what a wonderful story. More, more, more!! Love the short story format & the fantasy genre.
There's plenty more short stories (and fantasy) if you scroll down our Tales for Our Time home page, Mia.
Marc, a First Day Founding Member from Florida, writes:
No one does it better! Thank you , Mark!
From London David agrees:
Great choice and a fantastic performance Mark. You captured the spirit of the story and the essence of the characters with a wondrous precision and lightness of touch. Bravo!
Veronica in New Zealand:
Thanks for choosing this wonderfully eerie story Mark, it was great fun to listen to, and your voice was excellent, as it has a slightly ethereal, almost mystical quality to it at the moment. Understandably not ideal for you, but perfect for The Shadow.
On the other hand, Keith Farrell in the English Midlands preferred to stick with Agatha Christie:
My wife and I (both members so no cheating involved) enjoyed The Secret Adversary so much that we decided to jump into The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Your mastery of the multiple characters enhances the story.
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 seven 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 seven 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 this coming Wednesday'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 Bulldog Drummond 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 Bulldog Drummond 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.
