Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 04/12/2025Writing a bit about pubs in Chartism (Cooper advocates for them as meeting places in his novel but doesn't mention the whole, you know, drunkenness aspect). Having a fun moment getting to quote from the Chartist Circular's teetotal address that my 3x and 4x great-grandfathers both signed. 020
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 28/11/2025My Thomas Cooper library grows in size and splendour with an extremely rare first edition of Alderman Ralph. Only the first volume, alas, but there's plenty of indecipherable notes in the back to keep me busy until Volume 2 surfaces! 020
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 15/11/2025Reading some old BBC Schools broadcasting notes because the incredible Thomas Cooper play (WRITTEN BY ALAN PLATER) is featured and - man, the Beeb used to be something, didn't it? Our Tom would have strongly approved of the educational angle. 120
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 07/11/2025Had a long-overdue haircut this week and made the decision to do a close shave afterwards. This proved to be a mistake but it has, at least, allowed me to complete the Carroll diagram of Duncan's Many Looks Yes, I look good with the scruff and the cropped hair, I'm not ashamed. 030
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 06/11/2025I am ~15 years into my Europa Universalis V game and I'm blown away. This is a simulation of the ENTIRE world for 500 years (1337-1821), yet still deep enough for me to lose myself in battling Devonian and Cornish tin merchants over their weird local legal system #SmashTheStannaryLaws #EUV 120
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 03/11/2025Spending most of my time hiding in a crypt and playing dress up, as I usually do in heritage sites 020
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 31/10/2025Three bloody years on this PhD and I still get jumpscared by the low-contrast Thomas Cooper 160
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 25/10/2025Is there anything more South Manchester than having a print of your favourite brunch place on the wall 000
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 19/10/2025Proud to pay my respects to KING DAVID HARTLEY OF CRAGG VALE and also this poet my partner likes I guess 020
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 18/10/2025Brilliant book but especially essential reading for anyone interested in the history of commons land management 030
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 23/09/2025Big day - my parents inform me that it is finally the start of Long Dog Jumper Season 020
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 20/09/2025I think there's another anti-immigration protest going on in my locale tomorrow, which makes it all the more appropriate to be spending this evening reading my grandfather's own immigration paperwork. Yes, his profession is listed as 'hockey player', he was the most Canadian man to ever live 030
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 15/09/2025"We do not like the nomenclature of this novelist. It is too literally allegorical." Finally, a literary critic with the pluck to call Cooper out on his bullshit character naming conventions (I'm still not over the gardener, Eli Grubroot, and doubt I ever will be). 031
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 12/09/2025Back in the home of Thomas Cooper for reasons that I will make clear tomorrow... I don't think he would approve of the vulgar gesture but I'm cooler than him, so. 020
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 08/09/2025Views from the top of Pontcysyllte Aqueduct - built 1805, 126ft up 010
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 14/08/2025The most Disco of Disco moments in Alix Holt's preface to the essays of Alexandra Kollontai 000
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 01/08/2025Close, but I don't think that's what George Binns's most well-known Chartist poem was called (Yes, I'm reading Chartist poetry at 10.45pm on a Friday night. Party animal, me.) 010
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 29/07/2025#OTD 1847 was the first day of the General Election held in that year. It ran from 29 July to 26 August and is notable for the return of Feargus O'Connor, who won Nottingham's second seat on an explicitly Chartist platform. (Photo of the Feargus O'Connor statue in the Nottingham Arboretum) 010
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 27/07/2025My brain whenever anyone asks me to explain what my PhD is about (it's not even that hard to explain) 000
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 27/07/2025This is promising - Lewes suggesting that Eliot was quite interested in encouraging Herbert Spencer towards a debate with Cooper, in the days following Cooper's reconversion to Christianity. Don't think Cooper ever took on challenge, sadly. 000
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 27/07/2025Spending Sunday afternoon going through nine (thankfully digitised) volumes of George Eliot's letters looking for any connections between her and Thomas Cooper. Appreciated this quote from George Henry Lewes: "My function in life is to be ornamental". Mood, George, mood. 100
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 23/07/2025Happy birthday Michael Foot - who was a reader of Chartist poetry! I own his old copy of The Poetical Works of Thomas Cooper, used as research for his study of Byron. Foot highlights Cooper's mention of Sardanapalus, which is in part a ref to Byron's 1821 tragedy. 000
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 20/07/2025Tired: Drinking lager 🤢 Wired: Drinking ale 🍻 Inspired: Drinking SNUFFLY HEDGE GROG 🦔 000
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 13/07/2025Few shots from the 'Wonderful World of the Ladybird Artists' exhibition currently in Durham. Didn't know they did a Gaskell one (though it's not as good as the Cromwell, of course) 010
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 12/07/2025A fab day out at the 139th Durham Miners Gala! Absolutely frazzled now, but great to hear speeches from Jeremy Corbyn, various union leaders, the Durham Miners Association and Husam Zomlot, Palestinian Ambassador to the UK. Extremely motivational all round ⛏️✊ 040
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 09/07/2025Just been alerted to what's happening with the AI assistant on the Old Website 010
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 05/07/2025Saw Constable's Dedham Vale today at the National in Edinburgh. What a PAINTING that is. 1828? The transient figure in the bottom-centre? The central mill? The dominating church in the top-centre? The thatched cottage middle-right, separated by trees and almost being pushed out of frame? Come ON 4366
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 28/06/2025Greatest socialist this country has ever produced. It's a long-ish excerpt but his attacks on patronising middle-class philanthropy is as scathing today as it was when it was first written: 2155
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 25/06/2025Currently sending increasingly panicked messages to my Dutch friend 020
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 24/06/2025Mam and I have been playing a lighthearted game where she sends me photos of actors from Morse and I have to work out what else they're from. After three days she's starting to realise the level of neurodivergent TV knowledge she's dealing with 010
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 16/06/2025Doing a bit of organising in the archive, it's always fun when you come up against the Really Weird Bits of Owenism - especially the Hengist and Horsa play 'composed in the Spirit World' 000
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 06/06/2025Fact finding mission to a town recently described to me by a friend as 'the centre of the Universe' 010
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 05/06/2025Normal people: Congratulations on your new baby! Boy or girl? Thomas Cooper: WHAT IS THE GENDER OF THE NEW SOJOURNER IN THE VALE OF TEARS 100
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 03/06/2025Anyone around Manchester Central Library soon, do take a look at our exhibit in the main hall, "I've Never Read Elizabeth Gaskell". These are the outputs from a writers' residency, in which three young creatives developed pieces based on their unique engagement with Elizabeth Gaskell's legacy! [1/2] 101
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 28/05/2025Sometimes the days are harder and work can only take place beneath the Strawberry Thief duvet 010
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 24/05/2025Excellent news that at long last, football is finally back 000
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 21/05/2025Really good crowd tonight for my Zoom talk 'Laughter and Literature: Comedy in the Works of Elizabeth Gaskell' delivered for Elizabeth Gaskell’s House. Managed to shoehorn a good amount of Chartism in there, too, so happiness all round! 030
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 20/05/2025Also nothing has ever gone harder than their tea towels 000
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 20/05/2025There is an inverse correlation between my resting cortisol levels and the amount of time I spend reading The Idler. Can't understate the mental health value of a regular publication whose ethos is, in their own words, pre-Industrial Revolution idealism mixed with 1990s slacker culture 100
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 17/05/2025Baby Lasagna/Käärijä's joint appearance is more fire than any of the entries this year 1112
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 08/05/2025Bottom line reads 'Printed by W.J Linton, at Brantwood'. I spent a lot of time in front of the sole Linton display on my last visit. Glad it's there, but it would be nice if they made more of the Chartist connection. 010
Duncan Hamilton @dnhamilton.bsky.social · 25/04/2025The harrowing realisation that on the morning of my 26th birthday* I was... editing Thomas Cooper's Wikipedia page. You can go through the edits history and ABSOLUTELY tell which ones are mine *also Feargus O'Connor's birthday if you wanted to draw some extra humour out of it 000