"I didn’t march halfway across the world to put Jerry back in his box for jumped-up spivs to end up running the show at home." The first episode of Endeavour was broadcast 2 January 2012. thelionandunicorn.com/2023/01/22/e...

"I stroke it every chance I get..." Harry Roy's "My Girl's Pussy" (1931) and other classics by British Dance Bands. thelionandunicorn.com/2026/01/01/t...

"‘Jack Hylton lived like Nero,’ noted his friend, comedian Arthur Askey, ‘and was, naturally, a good socialist!’" @alwynturner.bsky.social celebrates the best of interwar British dance bands. thelionandunicorn.com/2026/01/01/t...

I've written another post for Lion & Unicorn. To celebrate its 10th year, the blog asked me to write about what the last decade has been like for the Liberal Democrats.

COMING SOON from Lion & Unicorn...

#8 is history man @benfinlay74.bsky.social's celebration of Malcolm Bradbury's THE HISTORY MAN. "Kirk is in many ways an opportunist, a reader of intellectual fashions & trends. He portrays himself as radical, but at heart he is still a career & company man"👇 thelionandunicorn.com/2025/09/27/t...

#9 is from @paulsaffer.bsky.social. "Goldsmith – frustrated at only being allowed one Party Election Broadcast – funded the distribution of 5 million promotional VHS cassettes across the UK, demurely titled: ‘The most important video you’ll ever watch’"👇 thelionandunicorn.com/2025/11/07/r...

#10 is from our newest writer @alantyler.bsky.social, on the essay which gave L&U its name. "We come back to the central criticism that Orwell had of the left, which is the baked-in tendency of ideologues to deny uncomfortable truths that contradict the faith"👇 thelionandunicorn.com/2025/12/17/o...

2025 hasn't just been L&U's 10th anniversary year, it's also been our most successful, with a record readership and four wonderful new contributors. Below I pick my Top Ten posts of 2025, in calendar order. But first, the story of how we got here.👇 thelionandunicorn.com/2025/08/02/n...

#1 is the L&U debut of the great @lordbonkers.bsky.social (Jonathan Calder), exploring the grim reality behind NO ROOM AT THE INN (1948). "The chief prosecution witness was the 10-year-old Terry O’Neill. Fair-haired and too small to see over the witness box"👇 thelionandunicorn.com/2025/01/09/n...

#3 is @alwynturner.bsky.social's essay on the troubling demise of the 'collective conscious'. "It might be too much to ask for something as enduring as a Hamlet, a Heathcliff or a ‘Hey Jude’, but there isn’t even a Mr Bean or a Mr Blobby – just a Bonnie Blue"👇 thelionandunicorn.com/2025/08/09/t...

"There was something terribly trivial about Y2K. The idea that humanity could destroy itself because it used six, not eight, digits for the date was culturally implausible, a far cry from the Book of Revelation" Our @alwynturner.bsky.social back in the NS👇 www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2025/1...

"‘I think I’ve just killed the Liberal Democrats,’ William Hague told his wife Ffion, after the Conservatives and Lib Dems reached their coalition agreement in June 2010." @lordbonkers.bsky.social on the fall and rise of the Lib Dems. thelionandunicorn.com/2025/12/29/1...

"Their opposition to the ‘Family Farm Tax’ appears in practice to mean opposition to any inheritance tax on land, and the Lib Dems have also taken the part of parents who pay for private education & owners of £2m houses" @lordbonkers.bsky.social on the Lib Dems thelionandunicorn.com/2025/12/29/1...

Happy birthday to Mike "Porky" Parry, "a licensed buffoon whose tongue and brain were in a perpetual state of civil war. ‘I think cathedrals are cathedrals,’ he’d declare, or he’d make reference to ‘Bordeaux – as in the tapestry’." thelionandunicorn.com/2024/07/14/c...

"If I ever make a Christmas album, shoot me," said Eliza Carthy in 2021, just two years before she released the album "Glad Christmas Comes". thelionandunicorn.com/2025/12/13/t...

"Incidentally a happy Christmas to all of you at home." thelionandunicorn.com/2025/12/25/t...

Saxophonist Ronnie Scott died 23 December 1996. He's included in @benfinlay74.bsky.social's guide to the golden age of British jazz. thelionandunicorn.com/2025/05/17/c...

Steeleye Span's "Gaudete" is one of only two top-twenty British hits to be sung fully in Latin... thelionandunicorn.com/2025/12/13/t...

35- “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there” is never more true than about the past just over the living memory horizon, and @alwynturner.bsky.social’s journey through Edwardian Britain shows it to be both very alien and very familiar at the same time #BookSky💙📚 #BooksOf2025

"The intellectuals who have tried to break down the insularity of the English have generally done more harm than good..." @alantyler.bsky.social on George Orwell. thelionandunicorn.com/2025/12/17/o...

"Damn it all, I know he was in the Crimea, but he’s no idea what a real war’s like." The great detective writer Dorothy L. Sayers died 17 December 1957. thelionandunicorn.com/2020/04/04/i...

"Just about everyone, left, right and centre, wants a piece of him. A battle for his legacy ensues, and this has produced a remarkably distorting effect on what he is perceived to have said." @alantyler.bsky.social on George Orwell. thelionandunicorn.com/2025/12/17/o...

I’m reading about the Edwardian era in the excellent Little Englanders by @alwynturner.bsky.social. The Parliament act of 1911: “It is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a second chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis.” We’re still waiting…

"The creeping cold has fingers That caress without permission And mystic crystal snowdrops Only aggravate the condition." Some festive listening as recommended by @benfinlay74.bsky.social. thelionandunicorn.com/2025/12/13/t...

The architect Wells Coates was born 130 years ago today. So here's @alantyler.bsky.social on his most famous building, the Isokon flats in Hampstead. thelionandunicorn.com/2025/11/19/i...

'Alwyn Turner is the master of funny, engaging social history' Struggling to find a present for the dad in your life? The Sunday Times suggests #LittleEnglanders by @alwynturner.bsky.social as the perfect gift to adorn his history shelf! Out now in paperback 📚 www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

What to buy for the dad who "doesn't want anything"? The Sunday Times has a suggestion.

'Tis the season to be jolly, and maybe to indulge in a little nostalgia, and certainly to gather round the hearth. @benfinlay74.bsky.social selects some music for the occasion. thelionandunicorn.com/2025/12/13/t...

Today, we shall mostly be watching the Clangers, created by Oliver Postgate, who died 8 December 2008. thelionandunicorn.com/2025/08/31/l...

Happy birthday to Barbara Hulanicki, founder of the Biba boutique, born 8 December 1936. thelionandunicorn.com/2024/09/07/t...

From the Sunday Times's guide to the paperbacks of the year.

"That’s the paradox at the heart of BBC Archive’s appeal: we are nostalgic for the pre-digital world, yet only the digital world can give it back to us." thelionandunicorn.com/2025/12/04/l...

"The Human Kind conveyed the vague but determined political motivation of those fighting – the desire to see ‘the old muddlers thrown out and people like ourselves doing the big things'." Remembering writer Alexander Baron, who died 6 December 1999. thelionandunicorn.com/2025/09/03/t...

"Nothing fancy, just some nicely chilled Blue Nun and a few vol-au-vents..." @alwynturner.bsky.social on the world of LIFE ON MARS. thelionandunicorn.com/2025/11/27/h...

@alwynturner.bsky.social I've written an article about Dennis O'Neill and The Mousetrap.

"My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt." Anna Sewell's only novel, Black Beauty, was published 24 November 1877. thelionandunicorn.com/2019/02/16/i...

"Call My Bluff is a model of understated entertainment and - God forbid in the present day - maturity." Tonight on BBC 4, Call My Bluff at 9 and Face the Music at 9.30. Read about my appreciation of both shows and BBC 4 here in my new article for @lionunicorn.bsky.social : #BBCFour #television

Harry Pollitt, future leader of the Communist Party, was born 135 years ago today. Here's the odd story of how he was abducted by fascists in 1925, held overnight and then sent on his way with a cup of tea and some cake. thelionandunicorn.com/2015/12/16/t...

"Call My Bluff is a model of understated entertainment and - God forbid in the present day - maturity." @benfinlay74.bsky.social on the delights to be found over on BBC Four. thelionandunicorn.com/2025/11/22/l...

"Special events in aid of popular left-wing causes were common: a ‘bowl of rice’ dinner saw the likes of R. H. Tawney and Harold Laski showing solidarity with the Chinese peasantry. On other nights, members luxuriated on oysters and other treats." thelionandunicorn.com/2025/11/19/i...

"The real scandal in all of this is that we begged our leaders to lock us up, strip our freedoms and bankrupt our future. And that is why the whole sorry mess has been forgotten." @finlay24.bsky.social on covid amnesia. thelionandunicorn.com/2025/10/11/d...

My piece about the Isokon building in Hampstead has found a good home. thelionandunicorn.com/2025/11/19/i...

Coming soon: A Shellshocked Nation - as recommended by @robbiemillen.bsky.social.

Coming soon: A Shellshocked Nation - as recommended by @robbiemillen.bsky.social.

"It would be easy to hate Audrey or Richard; to have some modern authorial self-insert wander in & tell them off for their privilege. But we don’t. We’re invited to laugh at their ridiculousness without malice" @finlay24.bsky.social on how comedy loves vanity👇 thelionandunicorn.com/2025/11/16/l...

Coming soon on @lionunicorn.bsky.social , yours truly on the quiet treasure trove that is BBC4.... #bbc #writingcommunity #drama #documentary #film #history #art

"Across three series, they spar, flirt and circle one another with the usual passive aggression of the English upper classes in mating season, until, inevitably, they marry" Our @finlay24.bsky.social on why it's modern comedy that's guilty of airs and graces👇 thelionandunicorn.com/2025/11/16/l...

"We laugh at them, and with them, and, crucially, we love them. The way you’re supposed to with sitcom characters." @finlay24.bsky.social on "To the Manor Born". thelionandunicorn.com/2025/11/16/l...

"To tell you the truth, it’s all about the hype..." Les McKeown of the Bay City Rollers was born 70 years ago today. thelionandunicorn.com/2021/04/22/l...