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Do you remember the covid lockdowns? asks FINLAY McLAREN. Of course you do. So why have we chosen to forget?

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Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 5h

"The biggest domestic upheaval since the war has been wiped from memory. Poof. Gone. Evaporated. We were barely out of our masks before we decided never to mention them again."
@finlay24.bsky.social on the covid lockdowns of 2020.
thelionandunicorn.com/2025/10/11/d...

Decade: Lockdown (2020)

Rear-view review: The Red House

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Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 1d

"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...

DAN ATKINSON on a Cold War tale of a doubting communist.

Rear-view review: The Red House

Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 1d

"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...

DAN ATKINSON on a Cold War tale of a doubting communist.

SIMON MATTHEWS watches Harry Secombe in an Ealing Comedy about the dying days of variety.

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Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 5d

"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)

2022 Politician of the Year (dead)

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Tim Bale @timbale.bsky.social · 2d

One of my favourite quotes (and not just because the same applies to me)!

Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 2d

"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...

He worried that he looked like a ghost, but the former 14th Earl could be a model for his slick successor Rishi Sunak.

2022 Politician of the Year (dead)

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Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 2d

"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...

He worried that he looked like a ghost, but the former 14th Earl could be a model for his slick successor Rishi Sunak.

ALWYN TURNER on Geoffrey Howe’s resignation from Margaret Thatcher’s government.

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Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 2d

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

2015 Politician of the Year (dead)

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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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Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 3d

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...

The unexpected return of a lost Labour hero.

‘I’m quite cool’ – Sadiq Khan

Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 3d

"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...

Mayor Sadiq Khan: a career in 55 quotes.

SIMON MATTHEWS watches Harry Secombe in an Ealing Comedy about the dying days of variety.

Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 5d

"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)

Top 10: Getting it together in the country

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Ben Finlay @benfinlay74.bsky.social · 6d

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

Fleetwood Mac, Gong, Paul Weller… they’re all in BEN FINLAY’s guide to getting it together in the country.

Final Cut: Number One (1985)

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Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 6d

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...

SIMON MATTHEWS watches Bob Geldof, Alfred Molina, Ray Winstone & Mel Smith in a dark movie about snooker.

SIMON MATTHEWS watches Harry Secombe in an Ealing Comedy about the dying days of variety.

Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 6d

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)

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

Miss Marple Joan Hickson A Pocket Full of Rye 1985

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

YouTube video by Agatha Christie fan

youtu.be

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Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 8d

"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.

Halloween hits: Brahn Boots

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Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 10d

Stanley Holloway - actor, singer and monologist - was born 135 years ago today.
thelionandunicorn.com/2021/10/30/h...

A Stanley Holloway classic, resuscitated for Hallowe’en.

ALWYN TURNER selects some passages from British literature that concern sausages.

Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 10d

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

The (rest is) History, Man

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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...

BEN FINLAY celebrates 50 years of Malcom Bradbury’s satire of fashionable left politics.

Pretentious, preposterous and perfectly flawed, it’s the best of glam rock – selected by ALWYN TURNER.

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Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 13d

"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

My personal Substack. Click to read Chris Dillow, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.

Reposted by Lion & Unicorn

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

chrisdillow.substack.com

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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.

What a difference a decade makes. PAUL SAFFER on the extraordinary transformation in politics since 2015.

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Lion & Unicorn @lionunicorn.bsky.social · 13d

"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