Programming note: Join Steyn tomorrow, Saturday, for another 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.
~Just ahead of Episode Eight of our current Tale for Our Time, a word from your host:
As I predicted over three-and-a-half years ago, before America's laughably misnamed "election" of 2020, things are cratering very fast on the free-speech front - in Scotland, Ireland, Canada, Australia, the EU and, most of all, in the United States. In such a world, I thank all of you who swing by the Steyn shingle as part of your daily rounds. I so miss the Internet of yore and the heyday of independent websites in the early years of this century - before the woketalitarians seized control and tightened the screws, in new media and old. I have spent much of the year to date defending myself against charges that my li'l ol' telly show was in breach of UK regulatory requirements - because it cited new reports by UK government agencies at odds with The Narrative of the previous two years on Covid, the vaccines et al. Well, so be it. We stagger on for as long as we can. But, if I'm honest, I am full of foreboding at what lies ahead - and our shrinking freedom to talk about it honestly. The last-photocopier-in-the-woods scenario gets closer every day - although we'll have to move it every night to avoid getting droned.
I'm particularly touched in such an environment by your kind comments about our content here. However, yesterday, re a critical development in Part Six of Bulldog Drummond, we had some pushback from Gareth Roberts on the vital plot hinge of whether "the girl" would have been tough enough to crank our hero's two-seater:
Starting a car engine required some time and physical strength in those days.
Hugo Miller, an English Steyn Clubber whom I had the pleasure of meeting in London last month (and also a Reform candidate in the recent UK election), responds:
Not really. The electric starter was invented in 1911, which spelled the demise of the electric car. Prior to that, you would have had to swing the starting handle, unless you employed a chauffeur, as many car-owners would have done.
By 1920, cars were quite 'modern'. I regularly drive a 1913 Panhard and a 1927 Lagonda as 'daily drivers'. Both are very easy to start - the Panhard has a foot starter on the floor, and the Lagonda a starter button on the dash. Yes, in 1920 you would have had to retard the ignition and turn the magneto on, but that's all very simple and requires no physical strength.
Thank you for that. I didn't get into it because I had a vague memory, from my reading, of a reference in the text to cranking the car - and so it proved. From an upcoming episode:
"The man," murmured Algy, "is indubitably mad. I'm going to crank the car."
But now I'm wondering if, in common parlance of the 1920s, the expression "crank the car" had outlasted the actual crank - in the way that "dial the telephone" outlasted the dial, and the introduction of push-button 'phones and early mobiles. If you know one way or the other, do let me know.
In tonight's episode of Bulldog Drummond by Sapper, our hero finds himself kidnapped:
In the open door four men were standing, each with a peculiar-shaped revolver in his hand.
"What the devil," cried Drummond furiously, "is the meaning of this?"
"Cut it out," cried the leader contemptuously. "These guns are silent. If you utter—you die. Do you get me?"
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Episode Eight by clicking here and logging-in.
Earlier instalments of Bulldog Drummond can be found here - and, if your tastes incline to the more obviously brutal, my serialisation of Nineteen Eighty-Four starts here.
Thank you again for all your comments, thumbs up or down, on this latest tale. Very much appreciated. If you'd like to know more about The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and don't forget, for fellow fans of classic fiction and/or poetry, our Steyn Club Gift Membership.
I'll see you back here tomorrow for Part Nine of Bulldog Drummond.
