I've been out crusading

I must own to my shame that I have not posted anything here for a while. I've been out crusading (the Naked Rambler is free).

And my scribe/secretary Simon Acland has been absent, working on another manuscript. He calls it Elite - The Secret to Exceptional Leadership and Performance. He tells me it is not about me, although from the title I believe that it is. Whatever the truth may be, I have had Acland severely lashed because either he lies, or he works in another's service against my will.

And what can this Secret to Exceptional Leadership and Performance be, save the  Grail?

In spite of my scribe's idleness and deceit, my story The Waste Land has now reached a far off country of which I had not heard before. They call it the United States of America and they tell me there are many there who know their letters. In a city there called New York, Beaufort Books has made my manuscript widely available to all who can read. I believe Beaufort Books take their name from Beaufort Castle in Outremer, or Qala'at al-Shaqif as it is known in the Arab tongue. But perchance they stem from that Beaufort Castle near my master Godfrey's stonghold at Bouillon; perchance not because in my day that was a poor place indeed, just a compound with four weak walls and no towers to speak of.

In any case, I salute the brave Beaufort Books of New York in the United States of America for their courage in risking the wrath of the Templars and promulgating my story.