Tomorrow, Wednesday, I'll be standing by to take questions live from from Founding Members of The Mark Steyn Club from around the planet. Simply click here and be ready to lob me a toughie starting at 4pm Eastern, 1pm Pacific, 9pm British Summer Time, 10pm Central European Time, and a bit of an early start for our Aussie readers, rather less so for the Kiwis, but we hope to have a few questions from the Pacific over the first long black of the morning. It all starts at 4pm US Eastern - check local listings, as they say.
~Ahead of that, welcome to Part Five of our new series Tales for Our Time. This first tale is an audio serialization of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1897 novel The Tragedy of the Korosko. When we left our band of complacent westerners, a routine tourist excursion had just been interrupted by the sight of an approaching group of Mahdists - the Isis of the late 19th century. As Conan Doyle observes:
They were herded in at the base of the Abousir rock, this little group of modern types who had fallen into the rough clutch of the seventh century—for in all save the rifles in their hands there was nothing to distinguish these men from the desert warriors who first carried the crescent flag out of Arabia.
And if you're "modern types" the notion that you could be threatened by anything so fiercely un-modern seems preposterous - then as now:
"I'm done!" he whispered, as the Colonel ran to his aid, and then he lay still, with his china-white cheek against the black stones. When, but a year before, he had wandered under the elms of Cambridge, surely the last fate upon this earth which he could have predicted for himself would be that he should be slain by the bullet of a fanatical Mohammedan in the wilds of the Libyan Desert.
You can hear Part Five of our serialization of The Tragedy of the Korosko simply by clicking here and logging-in. All previous episodes can be found here down the page and in reverse order.
~Founder Membership in The Mark Steyn Club is not for everyone, but it helps support all our content - whether in print, audio or video- and keep it available for everyone. It's open for a limited time only. And, aside from Tales for Our Time, being a Founding Member does come with other benefits:
~A free personally autographed book or CD
~Exclusive Steyn Store member pricing
~The chance to engage in live Q&A sessions with yours truly, starting on Wednesday
~Transcript and audio versions of our video content
~My new quarterly newsletter The Clubbable Steyn, the first issue of which ships next month
~Comment Club privileges
~Advance booking for my live appearances around the world
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~and the opportunity to support our print, audio and video ventures as they wing their way around the world.
To become a Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club, or to sign up a friend, please click here.