Programming note: Tomorrow, Thursday, the evening repeat of Steyn's Song of the Week airs on Serenade Radio at 9pm BST - that's 4pm North American Eastern. You can listen from almost anywhere on the planet by clicking the button at top right here.
The Mark Steyn Club has just celebrated its seventh birthday, and I thank all those First Week Founding Members who have eagerly signed up for an eighth year. We hope our First Fortnight Members will want to do the same in the coming days.
Following this afternoon's Clubland Q&A, here we go with Episode Twenty-Seven of our current Tale for Our Time - Agatha Christie's second novel The Secret Adversary. John Wilson, one of the aforementioned returning First Weekers, writes:
I must have missed it, but did Mark happen to mention the theme music for this book? I'm not at all familiar with it.
That would be music from Façade, John - a series of poems by Edith Sitwell that, round about the exact moment The Secret Adversary was published in 1922, William Walton began composing orchestral accompaniments for. Frederick Ashton subsequently turned it into a ballet, which Dame Edith decided she did not want her poems anywhere near, so the Walton settings (based on various forms of popular music) took on a life of their own.
Noël Coward walked out during the premiere of the original Sitwell/Walton Façade, but I've always quite liked it. I met Sir William not long before he died, and knew Freddie Ashton a little, too. As for my very slight connection with the Sitwells, I talk about that a bit here. But none of that's the reason I chose this particular piece. Rather, it's because it conveys very literally what's going on in a caper where facades abound, from "Mr Brown" to a young American girl pretending to be French to Tuppence's spirited turn as a parlourmaid. London is awash in false fronts.
In tonight's episode Jane Finn does her best to maintain her "memory loss":
I lay down on the bed again, and by and by Mrs Vandemeyer brought me some supper. She was still sweet as they make them. I guess she'd been told to win my confidence. Presently she produced the oilskin packet, and asked me if I recognized it, watching me like a lynx all the time.
I took it and turned it over in a puzzled sort of way. Then I shook my head. I said that I felt I ought to remember something about it, that it was just as though it was all coming back, and then, before I could get hold of it, it went again. Then she told me that I was her niece, and that I was to call her 'Aunt Rita.' I did obediently, and she told me not to worry—my memory would soon come back.
But how will she hide the papers? And will they still be there when she and Tuppence head to the enemy's lair? Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Twenty-Seven of The Secret Adversary simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
We're now embarking on our eighth season of Tales for Our Time and have built up quite an archive. So, if you've a chum who's a fan of classic fiction in audio form, don't forget the perfect birthday present: a Mark Steyn Club gift membership.
Please join me tomorrow for the penultimate episode of The Secret Adversary.
