Programming note: Tomorrow, Wednesday, I'll be hosting another edition of our Clubland Q&A taking questions from Steyn Clubbers live around the planet at 3pm North American Eastern - that's 8pm British Summer Time/9pm Central European.
~Thank you for your many kind comments on our eighth-birthday Tale for Our Time. There are sixty-nine others in our extensive archive. Our seventieth, however, is Jerome K Jerome's comic romp Three Men on the Bummel. It is not entirely pure escapism. In tonight's episode, for example, our trio finds themselves in a part of Europe where borders are highly conditional:
Of old, Alt Breisach, a rocky fortress with the river now on one side of it and now on the other—for in its inexperienced youth the Rhine never seems to have been quite sure of its way,—must, as a place of residence, have appealed exclusively to the lover of change and excitement. Whoever the war was between, and whatever it was about, Alt Breisach was bound to be in it. Everybody besieged it, most people captured it; the majority of them lost it again; nobody seemed able to keep it.
Whom he belonged to, and what he was, the dweller in Alt Breisach could never have been quite sure. One day he would be a Frenchman, and then before he could learn enough French to pay his taxes he would be an Austrian. While trying to discover what you did in order to be a good Austrian, he would find he was no longer an Austrian, but a German, though what particular German out of the dozen must always have been doubtful to him. One day he would discover that he was a Catholic, the next an ardent Protestant. The only thing that could have given any stability to his existence must have been the monotonous necessity of paying heavily for the privilege of being whatever for the moment he was. But when one begins to think of these things one finds oneself wondering why anybody in the Middle Ages, except kings and tax collectors, ever took the trouble to live at all.
One can no longer see the "alt" Breisach Jerome K Jerome enjoyed. In 1944, eighty-five per cent of it was destroyed by Allied artillery as they prepared to cross the Rhine.
On the other hand, they came out of the previous war with a hit song - by Fred Fisher and Al Bryan, the "Peg o' My Heart" guys:
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Nineteen of Three Men on the Bummel simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
We're now beginning our ninth 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 both for Clubland Q&A and for Part Twenty of Three Men on the Bummel.