Welcome to the seventieth audio entertainment in our series Tales for Our Time. That's right: our seventieth. Never thought these capers would prove that popular, but it seems they do, and month by month we've built a spectacular archive that runs the gamut from A to Z ...well, not quite, but certainly A to W - Jane Austen to P G Wodehouse.
As for our seventieth adventure, well, it's our second foray into the oeuvre of Jerome K Jerome. Back in 2019, I serialised Jerome's most famous book, Three Men in a Boat, which remains one of our most popular selections with listeners. The sequel isn't quite as famous, but it has all the key features of the original: the same trio of chaps, endless digressions, and great comic set-pieces.
Three Men on the Bummel was published by Jerome K Jerome in 1900 and, like its predecessor, was a runaway bestseller. If the formula is similar, the setting and transportation are not: Instead of messing about on the River Thames, our intrepid trio will be bicycling through Germany. Ever since my reading of Three Men in a Boat, I've had requests to add this our library. So your wish is our command.
In my introduction to this tale, I reprise a little of Jerome K Jerome's background and muse on the parts of his England that endure - and those that are lost. And then it's on to our tale:
"What we want," said Harris, "is a change."
Indeed. A change of scene... a change from the old routine... Now why would that be?
At this moment the door opened, and Mrs Harris put her head in...
To hear me read Part One of Three Men on the Bummel, prefaced by my own introduction to Jerome K Jerome's tale, Mark Steyn Club members should please click here and log-in.
We now have nearly eight years' worth of my audio adaptations of classic fiction starting with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's cracking tale of an early conflict between jihadists and westerners in The Tragedy of the Korosko. To access them all, please see our easy-to-navigate Netflix-style Tales for Our Time home page. We've introduced a similar tile format for my Sunday Poems.
We launched The Mark Steyn Club just shy of eight years ago, and I'm overwhelmed by all those members across the globe who've signed up to be a part of it - from Fargo to Fiji, Vancouver to Vanuatu, Cook County to the Cook Islands, West Virginia to the West Midlands. As I said at the time, membership isn't for everyone, but it is a way of ensuring that all our content remains available for everyone.
That said, we are offering our Club members a few extras, including our monthly audio adventures by Dickens, Conrad, Kafka, Jane Austen, H G Wells, P G Wodehouse, Baroness Orczy, Jack London, Scott Fitzgerald, John Buchan, Robert Louis Stevenson - plus a couple of pieces of non-classic fiction by yours truly. You can find them all here. We're very pleased by the response to our Tales - and we occasionally do them live on our annual Mark Steyn Cruise with special guests.
I'm truly thrilled that one of the most popular of our Steyn Club extras this last three-quarters of a decade have been our nightly audio serials. If you've enjoyed them and you're looking for a present for a fellow fan of classic fiction, I hope you'll consider our special Club Gift Membership. Aside from Tales for Our Time, The Mark Steyn Club does come with other benefits:
~Exclusive Steyn Store member pricing on over 40 books, mugs, T-shirts, and other products;
~The chance to engage in live Clubland Q&A sessions with yours truly, such as this coming Wednesday's;
~Transcript and audio versions of The Mark Steyn Show, SteynPosts, and our other video content;
~My video series of classic poetry;
~Priority booking for the above-mentioned Mark Steyn Cruise: our sixth will be aboard the Queen Mary 2, from Quebec City to New York, via the spectacular Saguenay fjord;
~Advance booking for my live appearances around the world, assuming I'm ever again well enough to make any;
~Customised email alerts for new content in your areas of interest;
~and the opportunity to support our print, audio and video ventures as they wing their way around the planet.
To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and don't forget that special Gift Membership. As soon as you join, you'll get access not only to Three Men on the Bummel but to all the other yarns gathered together at the Tales for Our Time home page.
One other benefit to membership is our Comment Club privileges. So, whether you like this seventieth Tale, or think it already holed below the waterline, then feel free to comment away below. And do join us tomorrow for Part Two of Three Men on the Bummel.
