The Lost World Audiobook - By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Read by Dr James Gill

[Music] hello everybody why I hope you're all fit and well as we can be at the present moment in time um so new book well actually not quite a new book you see I quite like Arthur Conan Doyle and as some of you may or may not know Sherlock Holmes didn't actually start as a book in the classic sense Sherlock Holmes began as a serialization in The Strand Magazine in London and subsequently people liked it and he became the literary figure we know but Arthur Conan Doyle also had other characters and he actually didn't like shark Holmes in the end because he felt that he stifled his ability to write his other characters and the lost world has one of those characters that he wished he'd been able to develop professor challenger and this was it looks like a book is not actually a book this is a collection of the original 1912 strand serialization magazines from when the lost world was first published all bound together sona so on a straightforward bibliophile esque point this is quite an interesting manuscript but more interesting than simply the provenance is also the fact that that is the lost world and the rest of this are other short stories that were published by Arthur Conan Doyle in the Strand Magazine so not only have we got a lost world here but potentially other interesting quite less well read copies of his work so with that in mind jumping around over there so with that in mind let's err have a look at starting the lost world patella dinosaurs adventurers and Victorian ideals and strange opinions in the same way that three men and a boat was interesting from a family perspective for me but honestly a slightly boring story the lost world I read as a child and you know I must have been eight to ten at the time so I'm looking forward to revisiting a characters and a series of stories that I do have in dim recollections of so with that in mind let's begin The Strand Magazine April 1912 the lost world being an account of the recent amazing adventures of Professor Georgy Challenger lord john roxton professor summerlee and mr. Edie Malone of The Daily Gazette by Arthur Conan Doyle illustrated by Harry Roundtree and the late maple white forward mr. Edie Malone desires to state but both the injunction for the restraint and the libel action have been withdrawn unreservedly by professor GE challenger who being satisfied that no criticism or comment in this book is meant in an offensive spirit is guaranteed he will place no impediment to its publication and circulation mr. Edie Malone would wish to express his gratitude to mr. Patrick elf Forbes of Roslyn Hill Hampstead for the skill and sympathy with which he'd worked out the sketches which were brought back from South America and also mr. W Ransford Val Monroe Hampstead if his invaluable expert help dealing with the photographs its truthin 1912 chapter one there are heroisms all around us mr. hungar tton her father really was the most tactless person upon the earth a fluffy feathery untidy Kakadu of a man perfectly good-natured but absolutely centered upon his own silly self if anything could have driven me from Gladys it would have been the thought of such a father-in-law I'm convinced that he really believed in his heart that I came to chestnuts three days a week for the pleasure of his company and very especially to hear his views on bimetallism a subject by which he was aware of authority for an hour or more that evening I listened to his monotonous cheer about bad money driving how good the token value of silver and the depreciation of rupee and the true standards of exchange suppose he cried in a feeble voice that all the debts the world were called up simultaneously and with immediate payment insisted upon what under our present conditions would happen then I gave a self-evident answer that I should be ruined man but from which he jumped from his chair and reproved me for my habitual levity which made it impossible for him to discuss any reasonable subject in my presence and bounced off out of the room to dress for a Masonic meeting at last I was alone with Gladys and the fatal moment had come all evening I'd felt like a soldier who waits for the signal which will send him on a forlorn hope she sat with that proud delicate profile of hers outlined against the red curtain how beautiful she was and yet how aloof we'd been friends quite good friends but never could I get beyond that same calm right ship which I might have established with one of my fellow reporters at the Gazette perfectly frank perfectly kindly and perfectly unsexual my instincts are all against a woman being too frank and at her ease with me it is enough no compliment to a man where the real feelings of sex begin timidity and distrust are its companions heritage from the old wicked days when love and violence often went hand in hand the bent head the averted by the faltering voice the wincing figure these and not the unshrinking gaze and frank reply are the true signals of passion even in my short life I'd learned as much as that or perhaps inherited it from that memory we call instinct Gladys was full of every womanly quality some judged her to be cold and hard but such a thought was treason that delicately bronzed skin that raven hair the large liquid eyes the full but exquisite lips all the stigmata of passion was there but sadly I was conscious that up until now I had never found the secret of drawing it forth however come what might I should have done with suspense and bring matters to a head tonight she could but refuse me and better to be a repulsed lover than an accepted brother so far my thoughts had carried me and I was about to break the long and uneasy silence when two critically dark eyes looked round at me and the proud head was shaken into a smiling reproof I have a percent Minh that you're going to propose Ned I do wish that you wouldn't for things are much nice as they are I drew my chair a little nearer now how did you know I was going to propose I asked in genuine wonder don't women always know do you suppose any woman in the world has ever been taken unawares open Ned our friendship has been so good and pleasant what a pity to spoil it don't you feel how splendid it is that a young man young woman should be able to talk face to face as we've talked I don't know Gladys you see I can talk face to face with I don't know the stationmaster I can't imagine how that official came into the matter but he trotted in and set us both laughing that doesn't satisfy me in the least I want my arms around you your head on my chest and Oh Gladys I want and she sprung for her from her chair she saw signs of what I proposed to demonstrate you've spoiled everything that she said it's all so beautiful and natural until this kind of thing comes in it's such a pity why can't you control yourself I didn't invent it I pleaded its nature it's love or perhaps if love then both would feel it but I have never felt it but you must I mean with your beauty with your soul of Gladys you were made for love you must love one must wait until it comes why can't you love me Gladys is it my appearance or what she didn't bend a little she put forward a hand such a gracious stooping attitude it was and she pressed back my head then she looked upon my upturned face and a very wistful smile no it isn't that she said at last you're not a conceited boy by Nature and so I can safely tell you it isn't that it's deeper my character she nodded severely well what can I do to mend it do sit down talk it over no really that won't you please sit down she looked at me with a wandering distrust which is more to my mind than her half-hearted self-confidence how primitive and bestial it looks when you put this down in black and white and perhaps after all it was only a peculiar feeling to myself anyway she sat down now tell me what's amiss with me I'm in love with somebody else she said it was my turn to jump out of the chair it's nobody in particular she explained that laughing at the expression on my face it's an ideal I've never met the kind of manner tell me about him what's he look like though he might look very much like you how dare you say that I mean what does he do that I don't do just say the word is et total vegetarian and aranaut Thea fist Superman don't give it a try GLaDOS if you only give me an idea of what would please you she laughed at the elasticity of my character well in the first place I don't think my idea would speak like that she said it would be a harder sterner man not so ready to adapt himself to a silly girl swim but above all he must be a man who could do who could act who could look death in the face and have no fear of him a man of great deeds and strange experiences it's never a man that I should love but always the glories that he'd won for they would be reflected upon me think of Richard Burton and when I read his wife's life with him I can do so understand her love and Lady Stanley did you ever read the wonderful last chapter of that book about her husband these were the sort of men a woman could worship with all of her soul and yet be greater not less on account of her love honored by all the world is an inspired of noble deeds she looked so beautiful and enthusiasm that I nearly brought down the whole level of the interview I gripped myself hard and went on with the argument but we can't all be Stanley's and Burton's I said besides we don't get the chance at least I never have if I did I should try and take it no but the chances are all around here it's the mark of the kind of man I mean he makes his own chances you can't hold him back I've never met him and yet I seem to know him so well there are heroisms all around us waiting to be done it's for men to do them and for women to reserve their love as a reward for such men look at that young Frenchman who went up last week in the balloon it was blowing a gale but because he was announced to go he insisted on starting the wind blew him 1,500 miles 24 hours and he fell in the middle of Russia oh that's the kind of man I mean think of the woman he loved and how other women must have envied her that's what I should like to be envied for my man well what I'd have done that to please you you shouldn't do it merely to please me you should do it because you can't help it because it's natural to you because the man anew is crying out for a relic expression now when you describe the Wigan coal explosion last month could you not have gone down and helped those people in spite of the choke tamp well well I did well well he never said so was nothing worth talking about really I didn't know she looked to me with rather more interest that was very brave of you no I had to if you got to write a good copy and you must be where the things are oh what a prosaic move it seems to take all the romance out of it but still whatever your motive I'm glad that you went down in that mine she gave me her hand but with such sweetness and dignity I could only stoop to kiss it I dare say I'm merely a foolish woman worthy young girls fancies and yet it's so real with me so entirely part of my very self that I cannot help acting upon it if I marry I do want to marry a famous man well why should you not it's it's woman like you who brace man up you've braced me up and give me a chance and see if I don't take it besides as you say men ought to make their own chances and not wait until they're given look at Clive he was just a clock and he conquered India by George do something in the world yet and she laughed at my sudden effervescence why not you've got everything a man could have Youth health strength education energy I was so sorry you spoke and now I'm glad so glad if it if it awakens these thoughts in you and then and if I do her hand rested like warm velvet on my lips not another word sir you should have been at the office for the evening duty half an hour ago I didn't have the heart to remind you someday when you won your place in the world we should talk it over again and so it was I found myself that foggy November evening pursuing the Camberwell train with my heart glowing within me and with eager determination that not another day should elapse before I should find some deed worthy of my lady but who in this wide world would ever have imagined the incredible shape which this deed was to take all the strange steps by which I was led to its doing and after all this opening chapter will seem to the reader to have nothing to do with my narrative and yet there would have been no narrative without it for it is only when a man goes out into the world and with the desire all alive in his heart to follow any which may come inside of him that he breaks away as I did from the life that he knows and ventures forth into the wonderful mystic Twilight land where lie the great adventures and great Ward's behold me then that the office of the Daily Gazette on the staff of which I was the most insignificant unit with the settled determination that that very night if possible to find the quest which will be worthy of my Gladys that was it hardness was it selfishness that she should ask me to risk my life her own glorification no such thoughts may come in middle age but never to the ardent three-and-twenty in his fever of his first love end of chapter 1 well I must have met time don't think Gladys is a a very nice person there but I have confidence that want to be honest any story that eventually involved dinosaurs should be rather good so hopefully that's piqued your interest I'm going to try and do one of these a week if only for my own sanity it gives me a nice break from things if you found this useful please like with video and if you're interested in hearing more of these please consider subscribing as well on that note I say good day and see you all later take care [Music]