Welcome to the latest in our series of audio adventures, Tales for Our Time. This month's caper was published 110 years ago, but may strike UK listeners as especially timely after Sir Keir Starmer's first weeks in office: in The Flying Inn, G K Chesterton contemplates an England in which the elites make common cause with Islam.
Some listeners enjoy our tales as a mug of nightly audio Ovaltine twenty minutes before they lower their lamp. Others leave it a few episodes to see if it's worth their commitment and then jump in for a big binge-listen. Either way, in tonight's installment, much of the focus concerns a dog on the Ivywood estate. As with humans, his Lordship has no feeling for dogs as individuals, but, as a matter of morality and public policy, does not believe in their ill-treatment:
She knew that in every practical sense proper provision would be made for the dog; as, indeed, provision was made for the yellow dogs in Constantinople by Abdul Hamid, whose life Lord Ivywood was writing for the Progressive Potentates series.
"Progressive potentates": There's a lot of that about. As for the yellow dogs of Constantinople, that's not a Mohammedan equivalent of a yellow-dog Democrat, but a reference to the city's huge population of listless mongrels, all strays of course because no observant Muslim can keep a dog in his house. Mark Twain observed that he always thought of himself as a lazy man until he encountered Constantinople's canines, after which he came to understand that he was by comparison a steam-engine in trousers.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear Part Ten of our tale simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
The Islamisation of Ivywood will ring a bell to those who recall the King's "carpet garden" in The Prisoner of Windsor.
Thank you for your interesting comments on our latest yarn. Nicola writes from francophone Ontario to say:
That's quite a bag of accents you can dip into. I guess it helps to have a good ear if you are in the music business. You could have made money doing voiceovers!
I did make money doing voiceovers - although not a lot. It was in my late teens/early twenties, and I'm not sure I've done many since. Fortunately, at SteynOnline, I can leave most of the voiceovers to Melissa and Lola. Still, I always wanted to do one of those blockbuster ads everybody recognises. My friend Monique Fauteux did the francophone version of a famous toilet-paper commercial and only has to sing the one word "Cottonelle" to be ushered to the best table in the restaurant.
Fran, a New Mexico Steyn Clubber, writes:
Mark's skillful, varied and colorful accents are a big part of what keeps me coming back for more to the Tales for our Time. Could it be that I have some element of an addict in me..? Mark might be the best narrator in the audible book category that I ever heard. Worth the cost of admission to the Mark Steyn Club.
Too kind, Fran. I like doing the different accents, although some of them are a bit taxing on my voice, which isn't in the best of shape since my heart attacks. So it requires a bit of careful pacing.
If you have friends who might appreciate The Flying Inn, Northanger Abbey, Nineteen Eighty-Four or our other tales, we have a special Steyn Club Gift Membership that lets them in on that and on all the other fun in The Mark Steyn Club.
If you've only joined the Steyn Club in recent days and missed our earlier serials (Conan Doyle's The Tragedy of the Korosko, Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel, Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda, plus Kipling, Kafka, Dickens, Gogol, Louisa May Alcott, P G Wodehouse, Agatha Christie, H G Wells, Scott Fitzgerald and more), you can find them all on our easy-to-access Netflix-style Tales for Our Time home page. Indeed, it's so easy to access that we've introduced a similar format for our poetry and music outings.
The Mark Steyn Club is now in its eighth year, and, in an age when "platforms" cancel individuals and governments cancel platforms, helps keep all our regular content - whether in print, audio or video - out there in the world for everyone. In return, membership confers, aside from Tales for Our Time, a few other benefits:
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To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and please join me tomorrow for Part Eleven of The Flying Inn.
