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paulmmcooper.com
Paul Cooper
@paulmmcooper.com
12K followers 650 following 570 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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paulmmcooper.com
I'll be at the Folkestone Book Festival next week talking about Fall of Civilizations, my book and why societies rise and fall. Come and join me!

www.creativefolkestone.org.uk/whats-on/pau...
Picture of me, with text: Folkestone Book Festival 2025 Paul MM Cooper: How Our Civilisations Fall Tue 18 November, 4pm Tickets: £12 / £8 / £5
November 13, 2025 at 11:33 AM
Reposted by Paul Cooper
fallofcivilizations.com
⛰️🏔️ Episode 20 is now live! 🏔️⛰️

In this episode, we look at the amazing story of the Achaemenid Persian Empire.

Find out how the world's largest empire rose, flourished, and finally fell in ash and flame.

YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRYd...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/6AeH...
November 12, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Reposted by Paul Cooper
fallofcivilizations.com
⛰️🏔️ Episode 20 is now available for all subscribers! 🏔️⛰️

In this episode, we look at the amazing story of the Achaemenid Persian Empire.

With readings in Old Persian and Ancient Greek, find out how the world's largest empire rose, flourished, and finally fell in ash and flame.
20. Persia - An Empire in Ashes **Now available for subscribers!** | Fall of Civilizations Podcast
Get more from Fall of Civilizations Podcast on Patreon
www.patreon.com
November 4, 2025 at 4:17 PM
Reposted by Paul Cooper
annieknk.bsky.social
The first episode of my new series Truly Tradly Deeply is here! We dive into the evolution of the tradwife subculture, how hyper-feminine aesthetics are weaponised by the European far right, and why Phyllis Schlafly was a Lean In Girlboss 💅💖

on.soundcloud.com/srccAxW4hXnc...
Truly Tradly Deeply Episode 1: Introduction — “All I Think About Is Buying Cows”
The first episode of Annie Kelly's 6-part podcast miniseries Truly Tradly Deeply. Cursed Media subscribers have access to the first two episodes right now, plus each new episode as they are released w
soundcloud.com
October 30, 2025 at 5:15 PM
Reposted by Paul Cooper
classicalalan.bsky.social
My favourite stretch of the Antonine Wall, the Roman frontier in Scotland, can be found at Dullatur. Here the Wall's enormous ditch is remarkably well preserved, tangible evidence of the impressive scale of this 38-mile-long monument.
#RomanSiteSaturday
A stretch of deep ditch with trees growing out of it. A modern stone wall can be seen in the foreground.
October 25, 2025 at 7:53 AM
Reposted by Paul Cooper
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
Little Holy Island retreat. Hiked for hours in the dunes. Prayed in the ruins. On the outcrops. By the sea.

Watched the sunset. Waited for the stars to open up. Saw the milky way. Saw a comet fall from the sky. Split into two. Burn up over the land. Red and white coals in the darkness.
A tree alone in the sand dunes A castle behind ruins and gravestones painted red by the sunset A rainbow rises out of the ruined abbey A sunset over the sea.
October 24, 2025 at 7:43 AM
Reposted by Paul Cooper
mrsmhere.bsky.social
Took an extended lunch break today to enjoy the #autumn colours before the coming winds and rain blow the foliage away.
The river Wear in the #Durham area is lovely in any season, but particularly so in elusive autumn sunshine. 😊

#FinchalePriory
Ruins of Finchale Priory on the banks of the river with autumn trees on the opposite bank. The river Wear, Finchale Priory ruins and autumn foliage in sunshine. The river Wear with sun shining through autumn leaves. Autumn foliage colours on the banks of the river with a footbridge in the distance.
October 22, 2025 at 4:08 PM
Reposted by Paul Cooper
mark-walters.bsky.social
I’m going to have to go back to the Hafod y Porth copper mine high on the slopes of Cwm y Bleiddiad (valley/hollow of the wolf), Eryri for a more detailed look as I didn’t have time yesterday. I passed a powder store on the miners track, the managers house & smithy & a nice circular powder magazine
October 18, 2025 at 9:25 AM
Reposted by Paul Cooper
forestcollectiv.bsky.social
🧵/4
After threading the razor-thin cornwall roads, got to Treyarnon & caught the Winecove Point Complex at sunset
Not clear if this was always 2 promotory forts or one which has eroded clean down the middle
Incredible either way

#HillfortsWednesday
October 15, 2025 at 8:31 AM
Reposted by Paul Cooper
kpw1453.bsky.social
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
October 13, 2025 at 6:38 AM
Reposted by Paul Cooper
ceej.online
damn. hoping it at least signifies something
shakespeare.lol William Shakespeare @shakespeare.lol · Oct 10
It is a tale
Told by an idiot
October 10, 2025 at 4:09 AM
paulmmcooper.com
Sitting down today to record for Fall of Civilizations Episode 20!
Me sitting at my desk with a microphone.
October 10, 2025 at 10:09 AM
paulmmcooper.com
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.
September 23, 2025 at 1:27 PM
Reposted by Paul Cooper
drrjwarren.bsky.social
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.
September 13, 2025 at 4:43 PM
Reposted by Paul Cooper
hedleythorne.bsky.social
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.
September 12, 2025 at 6:02 PM
Reposted by Paul Cooper
florilegia.bsky.social
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.
September 12, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Reposted by Paul Cooper
phdhurtbrain.bsky.social
Not sure any work of art haunts me like this one
Landscape with the fall of Icarus
September 12, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Reposted by Paul Cooper
corinnethespin.bsky.social
Holy smokes, FASCINATING thread about Caligula's "pleasure barges" and their attempted recovery by Mussolini.
paulmmcooper.com 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.
September 7, 2025 at 12:06 PM
Reposted by Paul Cooper
sardonicus.eu
Everything not saved will be lost. —Nintendo "Quit Screen" message
April 27, 2025 at 8:59 AM
Reposted by Paul Cooper
holboldoart.bsky.social
A Moment In The Ruins
The interior of the ruins of a large 13th century gothic abbey church. Arcades of arches atop heavy pillars flank a stepped grassy area leading up to a stone altar below 6 tall pointed windows. The altar of a ruined ancient church stands visible between light stone gothic arches open to the air. Two arcades of pointed arches of a ruined gothic abbey stand side by side, viewed diagonally. The exterior of a standing portion of a ruined abbey church constructed of light stone, featuring tall gothic arches and many pointed windows. Surrounding the church are the many ruined rubble walls of other abbey structures.
September 5, 2025 at 11:18 AM
Reposted by Paul Cooper
writermusician.bsky.social
After the fire.
#Photography #Urban #Street #Ruins
September 6, 2025 at 7:49 PM
Reposted by Paul Cooper
peterpaulrubens.bsky.social
Ruins of Eldena Monastery near Greifswald, 1825, by Caspar David Friedrich, born OTD 1774. Love the little house nestled safely among the huge ruins!
September 5, 2025 at 4:56 PM
paulmmcooper.com
Maybe @lukeoneil47.bsky.social is the poet laureate of our times...
How good we had it Planes were falling from the sky and the sky itself was falling but didn't the driveway still need shoveling? Salt for the icy steps. The kitchen sink full again too. And every day a new reminder that crying can get you anything you want in the world if it's the right kind of crying. Tears of men weak enough to do grievous harm. I'm told that we can't post our way out of fascism but they quite literally posted us right into it. Just another one of the many unfair things about posting and fascism. I watched a Family Feud the other night where Steve told one of the teams that they didn't give him the answers on his card beforehand but he damn well knew what the answers were not. One of two scenarios have presented themselves which is that everything gets so bad so quickly that a sufficient response becomes inevitable or else they only get just so bad overtime that we can keep putting our duty off until it is no longer ours. I pick up my phone every five minutes expecting it to tell me something good about the world and I thought of a night some friends and I crawled around on all fours looking for crumbs of cocaine that had been accidentally blown off the table into the carpet. I've been asking myself just how it is that a person can go about their day to day life at a time like this and I keep coming back to another question which is how did we ever convince ourselves we had the right to do so before?
September 6, 2025 at 9:17 PM
Reposted by Paul Cooper
elouin.bsky.social
#blackandwhitephotography #classicmono #fog #beach #graffiti #photographersofbluesky #photographersunited
September 4, 2025 at 11:27 AM
Reposted by Paul Cooper
stephengrae.bsky.social
Near Beetham you’ll find the Fairy Steps. Carved into limestone rock, local tradition says that if you can negotiate them without touching the sides, fairies will grant you a wish!

more in: "Folklore of the Lake District"
bardofcumberland.com/folklore/

#bookologythursday #booksky
September 4, 2025 at 6:53 AM