Thank you for all your kind comments upon our seventy-eighth Tale for Our Time. There are two ways to enjoy our audio adventures: you can tune in nightly, twenty minutes before you lower your lamp - or you can save them up for a good old binge-listen on a long car journey fleeing Iran or Minnesota.
Meanwhile, welcome to Part Six of our New Year entertainment. For the first of our 2026 tales, we're enjoying The City without Jews by Hugo Bettauer, a satire that cost the unfortunate author his life. Thank you for your kind comments about this latest serialisation. Joe Cressotti, a First Week Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club, writes:
This is great, Mark. Thank you very much for your reading and introducing this story to me. I regret that I was not familiar with it before now.
One note: it is interesting to hear all the references to the collapsing krone, which seems to have started even before the expulsion of the Jews. This too makes the story very relevant to our times, in which we too are living under a broken monetary system. It is easy to scapegoat when inflation has led to vast income inequality and the price of a home is out of reach for most people.
Very true, Joe. It is harder to radicalise large numbers of people if the economy's ticketty-boo. When it's not, and one's rulers appear barely to be aware of it, all kinds of byways open up...
However, the BBC has gone Tales for Our Time one better, and given us a Holocaust Memorial Day without Jews:
BBC apologises after Holocaust Memorial Day report omits Jews
In tonight's episode of our yarn, a visitor to Vienna notices a marked availability of hotel rooms, even at the Bristol (see picture above):
On a wonderfully warm, summer-like May morning an automobile, coming from the West Station, drove up before the Hotel Bristol, depositing there an elegant, slender, dark-haired man. With an experienced glance the hotel manager appraised first the heavy leather trunk and hand baggage, and then the stranger, whose short imperial beard and turned-up mustache, twirled in a manner then unfashionable in Vienna, lent something exotic to his appearance. "From the south of France," was the manager's conclusion; by a rapid mental process he translated French francs into kronen, and determined the price of a room in accordance with the astonishing result. To the question, put in French, as to whether a room was to be had, he replied, with an effort to suppress an ironic smile:
"Surely, Monsieur—would you like a single room, or a suite with bath? Looking out on the Ring, or to the rear?"
Amazed, the newcomer dropped the monocle he had held in his eye.
"Why, how's this? It used to be impossible to get accommodations anywhere without previous reservation!"
"My dear sir,"—the manager heaved a profound and sincere sigh—"it must be a year and a half or more since you've been in Vienna. Much has changed since then!"
And so prior reservation is no longer required. Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear Part Six of our tale simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
We'll be back here with Part Seven of The City without Jews tomorrow evening.
If you're minded to join us in The Mark Steyn Club, you're more than welcome. You can find more information here. And, if you have a chum you think might enjoy Tales for Our Time (so far, we've covered Conan Doyle, Baroness Orczy, H G Wells, Dickens, Forster, Kipling, Kafka, Gogol, Jack London, Jane Austen, P G Wodehouse, Robert Louis Stevenson and more), we've introduced a special Gift Membership that lets you sign up a pal for the Steyn Club. You'll find more details here. Oh, and don't forget, over at the Steyn store, our Steynamite Special Offers on books, CDs, and much more.