Welcome to Part Two of Lord of the World, our latest audio adventure in Tales for Our Time and our first venture into the work of Robert Hugh Benson, a favourite of at least two popes.
Thank you for your initial reaction to this serialisation. Susan MacLaren says simply:
Brilliant choice.
Bill Waldron is also on board, albeit even more pithily:
Huzzah!
For Sandra, an Illinois member of The Mark Steyn Club, this is second time around:
I read this book several years ago after reading Cardinal Ratzinger's comments. The book has had a lasting effect on me. A quote I wrote down from it: '...there was no God but man, no priest but the politician, no prophet but the schoolmaster.'
We'll hear that line in context tomorrow night, Sandra. In Part Two of Mr Benson's tale, the young wife of a British MP asks her husband about the drums of war sounding from the east:
"I think it is touch and go," he said. "The only remarkable thing is that here hardly anybody seems to realise it. It's too big for the imagination, I suppose. There is no doubt that the East has been preparing for a descent on Europe for these last five years. They have only been checked by America; and this is one last attempt to stop them. But why Felsenburgh should come to the front—-" he broke off. "He must be a good linguist, at any rate. This is at least the fifth crowd he has addressed; perhaps he is just the American interpreter. Christ! I wonder who he is."
To hear Mark read the second episode of Lord of the World, please click here and log-in. If you missed Part One, you'll find that here.
That opening episode prompted many notes from listeners amazed at how much the author foresaw a century advance. That last line above is a minor example. Even as the west de-Christianizes, Benson's characters retain "Christ!" as an especially forceful exclamation.
~If you seek other dystopian diversions, do check out our brace of Orwellian adaptations - Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four - or even a contemporary inversion of a classic, retooled for our wretched times, by Steyn himself. Whatever your taste, we have plenty of other yarns in all genres over on our Tales for Our Time home page.
Tales for Our Time started as an experimental feature we introduced as a bonus for Mark Steyn Club members, and, as you know, Mark said if it was a total stinkeroo, we'd eighty-six the thing and speak no more about it. But we're thrilled to say it's proved very popular, and and we now have quite an archive. If you're a Club member and you incline more to the stinkeroo side of things, give it your best in the Comments Section below.
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