“The Prisoner of Windsor”, by Mark Steyn, 394 pages, ISBN 978-0-9973879-1-9 (2023)
Broadcaster, columnist, & author Mark Steyn has a wide range of interests, from music to demographics. He seems to be one of the few people in the public eye who is willing to stand up and “speak truth to power” on topics like the loss of US Constitutional government, the negative health effects of CovidScam injectants, or English society’s reluctance to deal with the widespread grooming & rape of working-class English girls by Muslim immigrants. Unfortunately, that willingness to talk about things from which Our Betters avert their eyes has involved him over the years in expensive litigation over free speech issues. He won an important case in Canada against the British Columbia Human Rights Commission, is still being sued in the DC Swamp by “hockey stick” Michael Mann over a long-ago tweet, and has recently initiated action against England’s Ofcom “independent” regulator which booted him from the UK airwaves.
Perhaps to help pay the legal fees, Mr. Steyn decided to bring out a book version of his Rabelaisian audio series “The Prisoner of Windsor”. He describes this as an inversion of Anthony Hope’s 1894 novel “The Prisoner of Zenda”. In Mr. Steyn’s version, the dispossessed king of the (fictitious) central European country of Ruritania finds himself destitute in present day London in the run-up to the coronation of the new King of England. For intricate family reasons going back to the events of “The Prisoner of Zenda”, the protagonist bears an incredible likeness to the current Prime Minister. When the coked-up PM disappears, the protagonist is reluctantly drafted as a stand-in – launching an intricate, fast-paced, and highly-amusing tale.
Much of the humor stems from the protagonist’s tendency as PM stand-in to go off script, shocking the usual suspects and EU bureaucrats. There are many laugh out loud moments in the story, along with some more serious observations about the degradation of modern England, and even a few quite touching moments. Overall, the book is an excellent read!
In the fake “democracies” to which our societies have degenerated, we get few opportunities to fight back against those who would rule us. For anyone who wants to splurge $35 on an autographed copy of Mr. Steyn’s book to help provide for his legal fees, this might be one of those opportunities. And – who knows? – those copies might some day have investment value too.