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Paul Cooper

@paulmmcooper.com

12K followers 640 following 560 posts

Novelist & podcast maker｜Wrote River of Ink (2016), All Our Broken Idols (2020), Fall of Civilizations (2024)｜Creator of the Fall of Civilizations Podcast @fallofcivilizations.com

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Reposted by Paul Cooper

Kevin Wilbraham @kpw1453.bsky.social · 11h

The vaulted undercroft at Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire. The abbey was originally established by Benedictine monks from St Mary's Abbey in York in 1132 and became one of the largest Cistercian houses in England. 📸 My own. #MedievalMonday #FountainsAbbey #Yorkshire

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 1d

That rules, thank you buddy and hope you enjoy

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 2d

Thanks Dave, very kind!

Reposted by Paul Cooper

ceej @ceej.online · 3d

damn. hoping it at least signifies something

William Shakespeare @shakespeare.lol · 3d

It is a tale
Told by an idiot

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 2d

NEVER

Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 3d

Thanks my friend, that's very kind

Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 3d

Glad to hear it!

Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 3d

🫣

Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 3d

Sitting down today to record for Fall of Civilizations Episode 20!

Me sitting at my desk with a microphone.

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 5d

Glad you're enjoying Kevin!

Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 11d

Glad you enjoyed Murray!

Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 11d

Really hope you enjoy Kevin!

Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 19d

Thank you Rebecca!

Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 19d

Hope you enjoy and thanks for supporting your library!

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 20d

Cheers Kevin!

Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 20d

There is and it is - it took so long to do.

Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 20d

Thank you!

Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 20d

Really proud Fall of Civilizations has been named a Waterstones paperback of the year. Get it at your local Waterstones!

LINK: www.waterstones.com/book/fall-of...

Image of the Fall of Civilizations cover, with Waterstones Paperback of the Year written beside it.

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Reposted by Paul Cooper

Dr Rebecca Warren @drrjwarren.bsky.social · Sep 13

One day, nearly 2000 years ago, a cat dashed across some drying tiles, somewhere near Hadrian's Wall.

It's immortality of a kind, isn't it?

Photo of square orange tiles, set into the ground, across one of which several cats footprints are clearly visible.

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · Sep 13

Thanks for reading!

Reposted by Paul Cooper

Hedley Thorne @hedleythorne.bsky.social · Sep 12

St Catherine's Hill, Winchester, rising high above the Itchen Valley floodplain. On the summit of then iron age hillfort is a beech clump and nearby buried remains of a Norman chapel.

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Reposted by Paul Cooper

Spooky Scary Lorna @florilegia.bsky.social · Sep 12

Also this one

Musée des Beaux Arts

By W. H. Auden
December 1938

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

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Reposted by Paul Cooper

Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · Sep 12

Not sure any work of art haunts me like this one

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · Sep 11

Yes certainly a factor! Yew is great for bows because the heartwood and sapwood act differently under pressure, so it forms a kind of natural composite if you cut it right.

Reposted by Paul Cooper

Hyperbolic Pair of Pants @corinnethespin.bsky.social · Sep 7

Holy smokes, FASCINATING thread about Caligula's "pleasure barges" and their attempted recovery by Mussolini.

Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · Sep 1

Some of the most remarkable lost artefacts from the ancient world were the titanic wrecks of the Nemi ships, built for a Roman emperor.

In their first-century heyday they held gardens, palaces and baths in a floating wonderland. But barely a decade after their recovery, they were lost forever.

Onlookers queue up to view the excavations of Caligula's ancient Roman vessels, known as the Nemi ships 1932.

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