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lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn
@lionunicorn.bsky.social
520 followers 1.1K following 960 posts
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lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 23h
"America is in fact a dictatorship. Your President has total power, unlike the leaders of the Soviet Union. He is your Commander-in-Chief. Also he is in charge of foreign affairs."
Today we shall mostly be reading Derek Lambert, born 10 Oct 1929.
thelionandunicorn.com/2018/05/16/r...
Rear-view review: The Red House
DAN ATKINSON on a Cold War tale of a doubting communist.
thelionandunicorn.com
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lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 23h
"America is in fact a dictatorship. Your President has total power, unlike the leaders of the Soviet Union. He is your Commander-in-Chief. Also he is in charge of foreign affairs."
Today we shall mostly be reading Derek Lambert, born 10 Oct 1929.
thelionandunicorn.com/2018/05/16/r...
Rear-view review: The Red House
DAN ATKINSON on a Cold War tale of a doubting communist.
thelionandunicorn.com
2
Reposted by Lion & Unicorn
lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 4d
"Much of the film is shot in the Collins Music Hall in Islington, where packed houses rock with laughter at the antics provided by acrobats, performing animals and a drag act."
The last Ealing comedy saw Harry Secombe star in Davy (1958).
thelionandunicorn.com/2025/10/05/f...
Final cut: Davy (1958)
SIMON MATTHEWS watches Harry Secombe in an Ealing Comedy about the dying days of variety.
thelionandunicorn.com
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Reposted by Lion & Unicorn
timbale.bsky.social
Tim Bale @timbale.bsky.social · 1d
One of my favourite quotes (and not just because the same applies to me)!
lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 1d
"Can you make me look better than I do on television? I look rather scraggy, like a ghost."
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because you have a head like a skull."
"Does not everyone have a head like a skull?"
"No."
Alec Douglas-Home died 30 years ago today.
thelionandunicorn.com/2022/12/28/2...
2022 Politician of the Year (dead)
He worried that he looked like a ghost, but the former 14th Earl could be a model for his slick successor Rishi Sunak.
thelionandunicorn.com
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lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 1d
"Can you make me look better than I do on television? I look rather scraggy, like a ghost."
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because you have a head like a skull."
"Does not everyone have a head like a skull?"
"No."
Alec Douglas-Home died 30 years ago today.
thelionandunicorn.com/2022/12/28/2...
2022 Politician of the Year (dead)
He worried that he looked like a ghost, but the former 14th Earl could be a model for his slick successor Rishi Sunak.
thelionandunicorn.com
3 4
lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 1d
Margaret Thatcher's longest-serving cabinet minister, Geoffrey Howe, died ten years ago.
Here's a reminder of the time when the zombie sheep turned truly savage...
thelionandunicorn.com/2022/07/05/p...
Howezat
ALWYN TURNER on Geoffrey Howe’s resignation from Margaret Thatcher’s government.
thelionandunicorn.com
Reposted by Lion & Unicorn
benfinlay74.bsky.social
Ben Finlay @benfinlay74.bsky.social · 2d
Done and dispatched, an autumnal themed top ten which will be coming soon...
@lionunicorn.bsky.social #topten #autumn #classicalbums #folk #jazz #britishmusic #writingcommunity #musicsky
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lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 2d
George Lansbury stepped down as Labour leader 90 years ago today.
"Without Lansbury and what he stood for, the whole Labour movement would have been wiped off the map," said Michael Foot.
thelionandunicorn.com/2015/12/21/p...
2015 Politician of the Year (dead)
The unexpected return of a lost Labour hero.
thelionandunicorn.com
lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 2d
"What I’m not going to do is get delusions of grandeur."
Happy birthday to little Sadiq Khan. He's 55, you know.
thelionandunicorn.com/2020/10/08/i...
‘I’m quite cool’ – Sadiq Khan
Mayor Sadiq Khan: a career in 55 quotes.
thelionandunicorn.com
lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 4d
"Much of the film is shot in the Collins Music Hall in Islington, where packed houses rock with laughter at the antics provided by acrobats, performing animals and a drag act."
The last Ealing comedy saw Harry Secombe star in Davy (1958).
thelionandunicorn.com/2025/10/05/f...
Final cut: Davy (1958)
SIMON MATTHEWS watches Harry Secombe in an Ealing Comedy about the dying days of variety.
thelionandunicorn.com
3 3
Reposted by Lion & Unicorn
benfinlay74.bsky.social
Ben Finlay @benfinlay74.bsky.social · 5d
Led Zeppelin III was released OTD in 1970. Conceived in a remote cottage in Snowdonia, it is one of the great records that came from the era of bands 'getting it together in the country'. Read about Zep 3 and other albums made in that fashion here: @lionunicorn.bsky.social 👇
#musicsky #ledzeppelin
Top 10: Getting it together in the country
Fleetwood Mac, Gong, Paul Weller… they’re all in BEN FINLAY’s guide to getting it together in the country.
thelionandunicorn.com
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lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 5d
Bob Geldof is 74 today. He was a better actor than he was a pop singer - here he is as a snooker-player in south London, 1984 with Alfred Molina, Ray Winstone, Alison Steadman and Phil Daniels.
thelionandunicorn.com/2025/03/22/f...
Final Cut: Number One (1985)
SIMON MATTHEWS watches Bob Geldof, Alfred Molina, Ray Winstone & Mel Smith in a dark movie about snooker.
thelionandunicorn.com
lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 5d
Harry Secombe sings Nessun Dorma in the last of the Ealing comedies - it is at least a reminder that Islington Green was once a dowdy, down-at-heel area.
thelionandunicorn.com/2025/10/05/f...
Final cut: Davy (1958)
SIMON MATTHEWS watches Harry Secombe in an Ealing Comedy about the dying days of variety.
thelionandunicorn.com
1
lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 6d
It'll take a lot to convince me that the much-lauded title sequences for THE WHITE LOTUS weren't inspired by those for Auntie's MISS MARPLE.

Mike White's show often feels like Christie — just with more Yanks and guaranteed bumming.
Title sequence image from THE WHITE LOTUS Title sequence image from THE WHITE LOTUS Title sequence image from MISS MARPLE Title sequence image from MISS MARPLE
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lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 6d
Tonight on YouTube, MISS MARPLE 'A Pocketful of Rye' (1985) featuring a cracking cast: Clive Merrison, Timothy West, Peter Davison, Selina Cadell, Annette Badland & Tom Wilkinson, among others.

I love that Hickson played Marple so coolly and sometimes unlikeably.

youtu.be/1tKEsiOTbMw
Miss Marple Joan Hickson A Pocket Full of Rye 1985
YouTube video by Agatha Christie fan
youtu.be
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lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 7d
"He questioned my paternity so I praised his virility..."
The great Denis Healey died ten years ago today.
thelionandunicorn.com/2015/10/06/d...
Denis the menace
He was a political bruiser and hated by the left. But Denis Healey’s great achievement, argues DAN ATKINSON, was to cut without harming.
thelionandunicorn.com
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lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 9d
Stanley Holloway - actor, singer and monologist - was born 135 years ago today.
thelionandunicorn.com/2021/10/30/h...
Halloween hits: Brahn Boots
A Stanley Holloway classic, resuscitated for Hallowe’en.
thelionandunicorn.com
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lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 9d
It’s October. In America that means it’s National Sausage Month (not to be confused with National Hot Dog Month, which is in July).
Here's a literary anthology of sausages, from HG Wells to Rudyard Kipling.
thelionandunicorn.com/2024/09/25/s...
Sausages: an anthology
ALWYN TURNER selects some passages from British literature that concern sausages.
thelionandunicorn.com
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lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 10d
"Now it is autumn again; the people are all coming back. The recess of summer is over…"
One of the great novels of the 1970s, Malcolm Bradbury’s The History Man, is 50 years ago this autumn.
thelionandunicorn.com/2025/09/27/t...
The (rest is) History, Man
BEN FINLAY celebrates 50 years of Malcom Bradbury’s satire of fashionable left politics.
thelionandunicorn.com
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lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 12d
"They were one of the greatest of all rock groups – so long as you were a fan of sleazy, druggy, pretentious beauty. Just the names of the line-up were a joy: Kid Strange, Urban Blitz, Pete Di Lemma, Stoner"

@alwynturner.bsky.social on Doctors of Madness👇

thelionandunicorn.com/2025/09/18/t...
Top 10: Glam rock
Pretentious, preposterous and perfectly flawed, it’s the best of glam rock – selected by ALWYN TURNER.
thelionandunicorn.com
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chrisdillow.bsky.social
Chris Dillow @chrisdillow.bsky.social · 10d
After today, my old blog will be no more. I'll be posting here: chrisdillow.substack.com which now contains many of my posts going back to 2016.
Chris Dillow | Substack
My personal Substack. Click to read Chris Dillow, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.
chrisdillow.substack.com
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Reposted by Lion & Unicorn
lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 11d
"‘Coming over here, doing the jobs we’re not prepared to do because we’ve all got worthless degrees in media studies,’ grumbled comic Al Murray the Pub Landlord."
thelionandunicorn.com/2025/09/29/t...
The Blair Wave
ALWYN TURNER remembers the immigration boom of 20 years ago.
thelionandunicorn.com
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lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 12d
"After the May 2019 European election, which produced results with a rather distinct echo in the polls of 2025, Peter Kellner wrote: ‘Britain’s two-party system is in intensive care.’ Six years on, his words ring no less true"

From @paulsaffer.bsky.social👇

thelionandunicorn.com/2025/09/24/p...
Parties over
What a difference a decade makes. PAUL SAFFER on the extraordinary transformation in politics since 2015.
thelionandunicorn.com
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lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 12d
"‘When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease’, one of Harper’s best-known songs, features the Grimethorpe Colliery Band, and is a hymn to mortality which DJ John Peel insisted should be played in the event of his death"

@benfinlay74.bsky.social on Roy Harper's HQ👇
thelionandunicorn.com/2025/09/07/t...
Top 10: 1975
BEN FINLAY selects the best British albums of 1975. Expect the unexpected.
thelionandunicorn.com
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lionunicorn.bsky.social
Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 12d
"The latest wave of illegal Albanian immigrants was preparing to launch a cross-Channel invasion from a squalid makeshift campsite in a Calais park"

– Sun, 18 August 1999

The times they are a-invadin'👇

thelionandunicorn.com/2022/11/01/a...
‘Alarmist reporting’
Has the rhetoric worsened over immigration? A reminder of where we were 25 years ago.
thelionandunicorn.com
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