Tales for Our Time is a unique feature of The Mark Steyn Club - and, we're pleased to say, one of our most popular: our nightly audio serialisations of classic literature from Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four to Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, via some neglected but highly pertinent gems such as Conan Doyle's tale of proto-jihadists preying on foolish westerners, The Tragedy of the Korosko.
Our current caper is The Quest of the Sacred Slipper, a Sax Rohmer thriller from 1914 about murderous Mohammedans on the loose in England. Thank you for all your perceptive comments about this yarn. In tonight's episode Cavanagh gets an opportunity to recuperate from his travails in Warwickshire:
A brief wire had contained the welcome invitation, and up to the time when I had received it I had been unaware that Hilton was back in England. Moreover, beyond the fact that his house, "Uplands," was near H—, for which I was instructed to change at New Street Station, Birmingham, I had little idea of its location. But he added "Wire train and will meet at H—"; so that I had no uneasiness on that score.
The habit of referring to real places as "H--" or "Q--" or "W--" was commonplace in literature a century ago for reasons I've never fully understood. But Warwickshire is a fairly small county, so how hard can it be to figure out where "H--" is located?
Well, I riffled through Hatton, Haseley Knob and Henley-in-Arden, and then gave up. That's Henley at top right. At any rate, Cavanagh is obliged to travel via Birmingham and is shocked to find a Muslim on the train. As residents of the city can tell you, a century later it's increasingly difficult to find a non-Muslim on the train.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Twenty-One of our tale simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
I'll be back here tomorrow with Part Twenty-Two of The Quest of the Sacred Slipper. If you're minded to join us in The Mark Steyn Club in this our ninth season, 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 H G Wells, Jane Austen, Dickens, Conrad, Kipling, Kafka, Gogol, Baroness Orczy, Victor Hugo, Louisa May Alcott, O Henry, John Buchan, Scott Fitzgerald and more), we have a special Gift Membership that makes a perfect birthday present.
