Welcome to the thirteenth episode of our current Tale for Our Time: Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson. Tonight's episode includes one of my favourite passages in a book best known for its prescience on the moral and psychological questions of our time. However, Mr Benson also contemplated the age of high-speed air travel - a mere fifteen hours from London to Rome, and with no bossy stewardesses to demand you buckle up:
He had fallen asleep as the cold air of the Alps began to envelop the car, and had caught but glimpses of the solemn moonlit peaks below him, the black profundities of the gulfs, the silver glint of the shield-like lakes, and the soft glow of Interlaken and the towns in the Rhone valley. Once he had been moved in spite of himself, as one of the huge German volors had passed in the night, a blaze of ghostly lights and gilding, resembling a huge moth with antennae of electric light, and the two ships had saluted one another through half a league of silent air, with a pathetic cry as of two strange night-birds who have no leisure to pause. Milan and Turin had been quiet, for Italy was organised on other principles than France, and Florence was not yet half awake. And now the Campagna was slipping past like a grey-green rug, wrinkled and tumbled, five hundred feet beneath, and Rome was all but in sight. The indicator above his seat moved its finger from one hundred to ninety miles.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Thirteen of Lord of the World simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
Steve, a First Month Founding Member of the Steyn Club from Manhattan, writes of the story so far:
It has been a looong time since I have been able to start a sentence with 'I'm too young to have' ...but I'm too young to have experienced radio serials and their nightly cliffhanger endings. Mark's readings of Lord of the World are consistently leaving me gasping at the edge.
I have been resisting—so far—the temptation to hunt down an online file with the full text of this book. There were sacramental activities in the upper room of the top English communist's home in the last couple of installments. In that spirit, I must confess that I gave into that internet-reading-ahead temptation for a couple of prior Tales for Our Time. Mea maxima culpa.
Relax and roll with the cliffhangers, Steve.
If you've yet to hear any of our Tales for Our Time, you can do so by joining Steve in The Mark Steyn Club. For more details, see here - and don't forget our special Gift Membership. It makes a fun birthday present.
I'll be back to read Part Fourteen of Lord of the World right here tomorrow evening.