Programming note: Join me tomorrow, Saturday, for the latest edition of my weekend music show, Mark Steyn on the Town, at Serenade Radio. The delights are diverse, including big hits from little Luxembourg plus Neil Sedaka, Fiona Apple and Luther Vandross. It airs at 5pm UK time - which is 6pm Western Europe/12 noon North American Eastern. You can listen from anywhere in the world by clicking the button at top right here.
~It's always a pleasure to hear from listeners who appreciate particular aspects of our nightly Tales. Joe Cressotti, a First Week Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club, enjoyed our Wednesday volor flight to Rome:
What a wonderful chapter. I'm assuming from your comment you meant the fortress of the mind passage, Mark. I had forgotten about that and am very grateful for your reminding me of it. I will return to listen to this and read it again. It's a great reminder of the importance of prayer and how the capacity to self-reflect is not something one can take for granted. If I'm not mistaken, Hannah Arendt wrote about this capacity, claiming it was not as widespread as one might think. Having lived through the time of Covid, I'm inclined to agree with her. It's a bracing passage, fitting for a chilly flight on a volor.
Very true, Joe. It's very hard to go wrong with a scene like that.
In tonight's episode of Lord of the World, Robert Hugh Benson's far-sighted novel of 1907, Percy is summoned by the very pontiff:
A white figure sat in the green gloom, beside a great writing-table, three or four yards away, but with the chair wheeled round to face the door by which the two entered. So much Percy saw as he performed the first genuflection. Then he dropped his eyes, advanced, genuflected again with the other, advanced once more, and for the third time genuflected, lifting the thin white hand, stretched out, to his lips. He heard the door close as he stood up.
"Father Franklin, Holiness," said the Cardinal's voice at his ear.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Fifteen of Lord of the World simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
In this eighth year of The Mark Steyn Club, if you've a friend who's a fan of classic literature and want to give him or her a birthday present with a difference, we hope you'll consider a one-year gift membership in The Mark Steyn Club. The lucky recipient will enjoy full access to our back catalogue of audio adventures and video poems - Conrad and Conan Doyle, Orwell and Orczy, Kipling and Kafka, and all the rest - which should keep you going until the next variant blows in from Wuhan, or at least until the cancel crowd has had all the books banned. For more details, see here.
Through the chill of winter, our nightly audio adventure goes on, so do join me right back here tomorrow for Lord of the World Part Sixteen, a few hours after the latest Serenade Radio edition of Mark Steyn on the Town.
