Thank you for your many kind comments on our late-winter Tale for Our Time. There are seventy-eight others in our extensive archive.
Our seventy-ninth, however, is The Quest of the Sacred Slipper, a Sax Rohmer caper about murderous Mohammedans on the loose in the London of 1914. Kelly Harbeson, a Florida Steyn Clubber, writes of last night's episode:
How very British to assume an Arab is a "Jewish gentleman" just because he has money and a big motorcar?
I think you'll find "Mr Isaacs" was not an assumption on the villagers' part but an identity consciously chosen by Hassan of Aleppo. It was rather a clever one, too. In the run-up to the Great War, the most prominent Jews in the Empire were called Isaacs. Sir Isaac Isaacs was then the first Jewish judge on the Australian High Court, and later Chief Justice and the first native-born Governor-General. Sir Rufus Isaacs was the then Lord Chief Justice of England and later, as the Marquess of Reading (the first Jewish marquessate), Viceroy of India. As I had cause to write a decade back:
By the way, re that hospital the survivors of the schoolhouse massacre were taken to: do you know who Lady Reading Hospital is named after? The Marchioness of Reading was born Alice Cohen, the daughter of a Jewish merchant in London... Alice Reading devoted her time as vicereine to charity and health issues, and was the driving force behind the construction of proper medical facilities in Peshawar.
So here we are nine decades later: Jew-hate is endemic among the hard men of Islam. But, when it comes to treating wounded Muslim schoolchildren, the only game in town is a hospital founded by a Jewess.
There will be no Jews in the England and Canada of 2040 and only a few remnants in Australia. But they made their mark. Even in the increasingly judeophobic Quebec, there is a Lord Reading Society for Jewish members of the provincial bar. The Reading Power Station in Tel Aviv is named after him.
I write about these figures because nobody else does. But Hassan of Aleppo chose his false identity rather shrewdly.
In tonight's episode, Cavanagh and the girl with the violet eyes are hot on the trail of Hassan:
When, finally, we made along the narrow footpath skirting the west of the grounds, the night was silent—most strangely still.
The trees met overhead, but no rustle disturbed their leaves and of animal life no indication showed itself. There was no moon.
A full appreciation of my mad folly came to me, and with it a sense of heavy depression. This stillness that ruled all about the house which sheltered the awful Sheikh of the Assassins was ominous, I thought...
If you're a member of The Mark Steyn Club you can hear me read Part Twenty of our serialisation of The Quest of the Sacred Slipper simply by clicking here and logging-in. I think it safe to say that even our more jaded listeners will find the conclusion of tonight's episode one they didn't see coming. All previous episodes can be heard here.
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To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and don't forget our special Gift Membership, which makes a perfect birthday present. The minute you sign up you'll have access to all seventy-nine Tales for Our Time, including my serialisations of Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Time Machine and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. And please join me tomorrow evening for Part Twenty-One of The Quest of the Sacred Slipper.
