Happy Easter to our readers, listeners and viewers around the world. We have plenty of seasonal content for you: a meditation by T S Eliot as Steyn's Easter video poem; Mark's twentieth-birthday take on Mel Gibson's blockbuster The Passion of the Christ; his adaptation of Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris, and his thoughts on the fifth anniversary of the burning of a Paris landmark, whose silence and emptiness have now spread to many churches across Christendom.
However, if you missed today's brand new Serenade Radio Song of the Week, we are reprising it here: Steyn's revised audio adaptation of an essay that appears in his book A Song For The Season: the story of the most famous pop hit about Easter - sort of. Mark first told this story nearly two decades ago, so he thought it might be time to see if it could be improved and freshened up a little.
Irving Berlin's "Easter Parade" has its beginnings in a very obscure chin-up song from the Great War written in 1917. Yet somehow a First World War morale booster re-emerged a generation later as the American Songbook's only Easter standard. Along the way,Steyn also explores the long languished tradition of Easter parades, the meaning of the word "rotogravure", and whether anyone actually could write a sonnet about your Easter bonnet.
To accompany Mark on the trail of this American anthem, there are musical performers from Al Jolson and John McCormack to Rosemary Clooney and Steve Goodman - plus Irving Berlin himself and a young George Gershwin. And we'll also touch on a few other numbers that played a role in this song's story, from "God Bless America" and "Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag" to "Hooray for Hollywood" and the haunting "Supper Time".
To listen to our "Easter Parade" podcast, simply click the button above - and don't forget that Mark's beloved book A Song For The Season, which includes his essay on "Easter Parade", is also out in eBook - at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indigo-Chapters in Canada, and worldwide. So, whatever your preferred digital distribution method, you can be reading it within a minute!
Alternatively you can order your personally autographed copy of the good old-fashioned print edition of Song For The Season exclusively from the SteynOnline bookstore - and, if you're a Mark Steyn Club member, remember to enter your promo code at checkout to enjoy special member pricing. For more on The Mark Steyn Club, fast approaching its seventh birthday, see here - and don't forget our special Gift Membership.
We do enjoy your comments on the show. Steyn Clubbers are welcome to leave them below - or anybody can leave them over at Serenade Radio, where they love hearing from listeners.
Steyn's Song of the Week airs thrice weekly on Serenade Radio in the UK, one or other of which broadcasts is certain to be convenient for whichever part of the world you're in:
5.30pm Sunday London (12.30pm New York)
5.30am Monday London (4.30pm Sydney)
9pm Thursday London (1pm Vancouver)
Whichever you prefer, you can listen from anywhere on the planet right here.
