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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 23h

It was more of a “roar”! “fffwwwoooaaarrrr” makes it sound like something Sid James would have said.

Reposted by Dr Seth Thévoz

The Bunker podcast – Your daily news Deep Dive @bunkerpod.bsky.social · 23h

Christa Pike is "walking and talking" after surviving two botched executions, the Kremlin insists Russia hasn’t unleashed the plague on the world and party conference season is over – hurrah! @nndroid.bsky.social and @seththevoz.bsky.social recap the BIG stories of the week ➡️ linktr.ee/bunker_pod

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

For a topical discussion on EU reaccession, and the “late lamented” Jeffrey Archer…

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Private Eye Magazine @privateeyenews.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Archer’s resignation from the London mayoral race after it was revealed he lied in court was the thing that got Paul Foot up from his sickbed and contributing again, having first started chronicling Archer’s lies and misdemeanours in 1969. From the Private Eye archive. Issue 992, December 1999.

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Here’s a 32-year-old Nadhim Zahawi - then working as Jeffrey Archer’s press spokesperson on his Mayoral campaign - reading out Archer’s resignation statement, after the publication of the evidence of perjury that eventually saw Archer jailed.

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

RIP Eva Marie Saint. She starred in my favourite film, North by Northwest (1959) - she’s magnificent in that - and she was still acting well into the 2000s. As long as she was around, it felt like there was still a living link to the Golden Age of Hollywood. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/06/m...

nytimes.com

Eva Marie Saint, Oscar Winner for ‘On the Waterfront,’ Is Dead at 102

A luminous beauty with dramatic depth, she brought a layered intensity to harrowing roles and seduced Cary Grant in the romantic thriller “North by Northwest.”

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Hatchard's bookshop gives an annual booze-up for its authors. On more than one occasion, I've found myself within a metre or two of both Jeffrey Archer, and his biographer Michael Crick. I always said hello to Michael, and beat a hasty but dignified retreat from Archer.

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Kemi Badenoch’s literally calling it 'The Right Way'. In the original 1990 'House of Cards', that was a spoof, not a serious proposition.

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Anthony Blunt resigned from the Travellers Club a week before his public exposure, to spare the club the embarrassment of his still being described as a member. According to his Cambridge staircase neighbour John Cairncross, Blunt had first been urged to join the Travellers by his KGB handler.

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

His concluding words, “I hope to be able to go back and do some work on art history,” seem almost touchingly naive. He died three and a half years later, having been pretty universally shunned.

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Interview highlights include Blunt saying he had “no objection at all” to being stripped of his knighthood, but “I mind very much” being booted out as a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Reminds me of one of Stephen Fry's Trefusis monologues, in which the character admits to having been a spy for decades, ever since he was recruited at Cambridge, but never having bothered to ask which side he was working for: "Loyalty to one's friends is the most important thing."

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

A more genteel age, when traitors and spies were perfectly willing to go on the evening news to answer questions. www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJbI...

youtube.com

Soviet Spy Anthony Blunt Interviewed on News at Ten (1979)

YouTube video by Frontline by ITN

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Right on cue… bsky.app/profile/atru...

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TheKnightIrish @theknightirish.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Where better to read @seththevoz.bsky.social’s The Secret Life of London Private Members’ Clubs than in my own little club, the Soho Whisky Club. I’ve combined in with a rich @glendronach.bsky.social from a PX sherry cask. #readingndrinking

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I’ll have a listen, thanks. After a summer of Wagner, it’s something I’ve been grappling with!

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I grew up with this show, and never cease to be amazed at how it doesn’t age. The characters are beautifully written and played; and above all, it’s so pacy. No wonder Phil Silvers ended up having a string of strokes, throwing himself into the scenarios with such aplomb.

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Reposted by Dr Seth Thévoz

Jonathan Calder @lordbonkers.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Liberal England: Violet Bonham Carter and Mary Stocks remember the struggle for women's suffrage A television discussion from 1968, chaired by a young Joan Bakewell, with two women who were there.

liberalengland.blogspot.com

Violet Bonham Carter and Mary Stocks remember the struggle for women's suffrage

I thought I had finished blogging for today, but this video is too good not to share with you tonight. It's a BBC2 discussion from 1968 with...

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dls100.bsky.social @dls100.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Mark Carney graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1985. He got his Masters & PHD in Economics at Oxford. He worked at Goldman Sachs. He was the governor of the Bank of England, then the governor of the Bank of Canada. Here's Trump's background in "economics"🙄, from his niece, Mary Trump:

Donald, on the other hand, couldn't even get into college. When he graduated from New York Military Academy that spring, he hadn't yet been accepted anywhere and asked his older sister, Maryanne, for help. She drove him around to local schools close enough to my grandparents' house so he could commute, and Fordham University finally found a spot for him. Fordham, however, wasn't prestigious enough for him. He had his sights set on the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton School.
Because Maryanne did his homework for him and wrote his papers, his grades were decent enough, but he worried about the SATs. To hedge his bets, he paid a guy he knew, with a reputation for being a good test taker, to take his SATs for him. Just to be on the safe side, he also asked my dad to speak with his fraternity brother, who worked in Penn's admissions office to put in a good word.

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I’m bemused to see that Podmasters now have me as a meme, with a “doomed, but chipper” expression when analysing bad news.

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Reposted by Dr Seth Thévoz

Oh God, What Now? – the politics podcast @ohgodwhatnow.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

In the wake of Farage and Reform’s record-breaking £36m donation from Ben Delo, @seththevoz.bsky.social looks back at some of British politics' biggest donations. Hear the full conversation via ➡️ linktr.ee/ohgodwhatnowpod

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Insomnia means watching the Republican National Convention of 1976, while the band is playing 'Tie a Yellow Ribbon' on the convention floor as the runners & riders are discussed; and along with the wide suit lapels, it is the most seventies thing ever. youtu.be/0MBl40dv18w?...

youtu.be

1976 Republican National Convention

YouTube video by Memoryretro

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Lots to discuss, on Farage’s £36 million mega-donations..

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Some G. K. Chesterton fan should do a pastiche of ‘The Man Who Was Thursday’, where it turns out that *everyone* at the BBC is an undercover right-winger trying to do an exposé on how it’s supposedly secretly run by left-wingers.

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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Perhaps, during his private education, fake bloke Daniel Thomas read PG Wodehouse's Code of the Woosters and thought "that Roderick Spode and his Black Shorts sounds like a spiffing fellow, and just the chap I want to be when I grow up." And there they are, black shorts and all. A dream come true.

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Oh God, What Now? – the politics podcast @ohgodwhatnow.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

🚨NEW EPISODE🚨 Farage is trying every excuse he can after *that* documentary. Will they work? @seththevoz.bsky.social, @jonnelledge.bsky.social, @rmcunliffe.bsky.social & @rafaelbehr.bsky.social discuss the fallout ➡️ linktr.ee/ohgodwhatnowpod

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Well, I've got to grant Dr. James Orr this, his "impact" submission for REF 2029 is already sorted.

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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

90 years ago, Parliament responded to the rise of Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts by passing the Public Order Act, which banned political uniforms, private militias and the threat of force for political objects. The debates make very resonant reading today. Here's the Liberal Robert Bernays. (Short 🧵)

You cannot conduct a fair match when one side is playing with a ball and the other with bombs and, if democracy is to survive, it must be conducted according to definite and recognised rule. One of them is that no political party should resort to any weapon other than reason and argument. The introduction of private armies, as I see it, strikes at the root of democracy. I know it is contended that the Blackshirts are not armed and, therefore, are not an army, but I do not think that argument can be upheld. … Uniformed men in military formation suggest, and are meant to suggest, the idea of force. It is no argument to reply that at this or that demonstration no force is intended. It is an inescapable fact that a uniform in politics symbolises force, to be used either now or in the future.

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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

this is the kind of design costume designers make to tell you who are the bad guys in a space movie

Donald Trump posts an image on his Truth Social account. It shows a new uniform for US Space Force members, comprising of an all-black outfit with knee-high black leather boots, black cap, and minimalist looking suit.

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Incidentally, that looks suspiciously like a Hurlingham Club tie being worn by Farage. (An illustrated guide to the tie patterns of London clubs, over on my Clubland Substack, is a work-in-progress.)

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Here’s the 165-year old recipe from Brooks’s club, reproduced in my last book, ‘London Clubland’; along with pictures of Farage in the Great Subscription Room of Brooks’s.

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I’m as surprised as you that so much of the Channel 4’s Reform UK fundraising investigation overlaps with Clubland. One other thing went unnoticed: Nigel Farage’s predilection for Black Velvet, the Guinness-and-champagne cocktail that came out of Brooks’s, where Farage has been a guest in the past.

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Movies Silently @moviessilently.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

"Billie" is such an interesting name. Tons of 1910s and 1920s silent actresses took it as a screen name, almost none of them actually had it as a birth name. It started taking off IRL in the 1920s and peaked in 1930. So it was pretty much an astroturfed name.

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

There are plenty of photos taken in the same building - Reform UK seems to have a season ticket on booking the Royal Horseguards Hotel, and specifically the function rooms on the floor above the NLC - but as far as I’m aware, not the NLC itself.

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

More “spot the London club“. Channel 4 have now posted an expanded version of their fly-on-the-wall investigative documentary, with extra scenes at Oswald’s. You can view it here: m.youtube.com/watch?v=RugP...

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

A worthy sequel to this, from a decade ago.

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Is this what Reform UK meant by “the lanyard classes”?

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

A bold move, denying dishonesty whilst cosplaying as a bookie.

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Robert Hutton @roberthutton.co.uk · 04/09/2026

With all respect to the BBC, the reason this story "matters" is not about whether it distracts from Reform's conference. It "matters" because it is important our leaders are not conspiring to break the law.

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

(Just because a society has been disaffiliated/banned, it doesn’t follow that it no longer meets…)

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

You’re referring to the Adonaisans? If so, why are you using the past tense?

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Possibly. But they’ve already used the fig-leaf of century-old congressional approval for a never-implemented plan to build a couple of (much smaller) pillars as a justification to bypass the need for congressional approval today. So it’s not clear they’d need a “military” excuse.

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

There was no mention of any military application until Secretary Burgum’s announcement yesterday.

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Hang on. First there was a White House ballroom which was just meant to be a ballroom; but later magically snuck in a state-of-the-art 6-storey military bunker & underground complex. Now we have this ludicrous triumphal arch, which we’re now told will also host…a “military observation deck”?!?

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

"So the Reality is We Can Easily Get Away With It" sounds like the title of a confessional memoir, published 18 months later.

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Dr Seth Thévoz @seththevoz.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

A game of “spot the London club“, as a setting in Channel 4 News’s most recent undercover investigation. www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXut...

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Charlotte Nichols MP @charlotte2153.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

For someone that had never been a backbench MP, and who broadly treated backbench MPs with at best indifference and at worst contempt during his time as leader, I'm not that surprised at all though I'd hoped he might actually have a crack at it (who knows, might have even enjoyed it?)

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