Chris Downs

@chris-downs.bsky.social

231 Followers 323 Following

University worker in the UK "a teacher's primary responsibility is not to get in the way of learning" - Mark Notturno

Copies of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, No Surrender, and This Slavery on the shelves of the 2026 Hay Festival bookshop in a big tent. All three are graphic novel adaptations of political novels first published in the early 20th century - drawing by Scarlett Rickard & words by Sophie Rickard.
A poster advertising an event: Worthing and the Spanish Civil War: A Fight Against Fascism Friday 22 May 2026 at AudioActive in Worthing. The dominant colours in the top half are red, yellow and purple. The lower part comprises a period posed photograph of young people in bathing costumes with Worthing pier behind.
A poster advertising an event: Worthing and the Spanish Civil War: A Fight Against Fascism Friday 22 May 2026 at AudioActive in Worthing. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/worthing-and-the-spanish-civil-war-a-fight-against-fascism-tickets-1986437905248
Promotional image from https://www.townsendproductions.org.uk/shows/a-new-one-man-magic-lantern-show-of-the-classic-book-the-ragged-trouseed-philanthropists/ Red text on a yellow background reads: The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Below is a picture of a bearded man in a hat playing a small accordion together with other promotional text and logos.
Marchers on the Together Alliance march in London on 38 March 2026. Two placards are prominent. One says Make Art Not War in black letters on a vivid blue background. The other is highly decorative in mainly red & green and says Don"t Let the Bastards Grind You Down.
An image showing the planned statue of Madge Turner, campaigner for women's suffrage. The statue is of a woman in a long skirt holding a flag/standard. In the background is the former Dolphin Hotel on West Street, Chichester.
A photo of three books and a manuscript in a display case. See text of post for details.
A photograph of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell. It's a thick hardback book. The dust jacket is mainly red and features a black & white drawing of a man wearing an apron holding a paint pot in one hand and a paint brush in the other.
An image of the front cover of This Slavery by Scarlett & Sophie Rickard. The book is a graphic novel adaptation of a novel writtjen by Ethel Carnie Holdsworth and originally published in 1925. The front cover shows the two main characters, sisters Hester & Rachel Martin standing back to back in a street of terraced houses. One is fair, the other is dark-haired. They are looking out at us, the viewers, and there are smoking factory chimneys in the background. The white face of a dog looks out us from behind the long coat or skirt of the sister on the right.
An image showing three panels from p.28 of This Slavery. The book is a graphic novel adaptation by Scarlett & Sophie Rickard of a novel written in the early 20th century by Ethel Carnie Holdsworth. In these panels Jack Baines is seeking Mrs Martin's approval for his romantic relationship with her younger daughter Hester (known as Hessie). The three characters are sitting at the dining table in the Martins' home.
Photo of the front cover of the 2025 graphic novel adaptation of Ethel Carnie Holdsworth's early 20th century novel This Slavery. The cover shows the two main characters Hester & Rachel Martin standing back to back in a street of terraced housing, with factory chimneys in the background.
Photo of text on back cover of This Slavery by Scarlett and Sophie Rickard. It reads as follows. Thrown out of work when the cotton mill burns down, sisters Rachel and Hesther Martin are forced find new ways to survive. One agitates for reform, striving to free her community from the enslavement of the factory system; the other submits to the slavery of a patriarchal marriage. A hundred years after the first publication of Ethel Carnie Holdsworth's lost classic, this sumptuous adaptation by sisters Scarlett and Sophie Rickard weaves her tale of romance and hope through the cobbled streets of industrial Lancashire.
An image from p.52 of This Slavery by Scarlett & Sophie Rickard: a young woman watches as a man in working men's attire writes "Workers of the world unite" in white chalk on a grey stone wall.
Picture of the cover of "Spain 1936-39", a pocket book of radical posters published in 2025 by The Radical Poster Collective. The cover features the poster "CNT 19 Julio 1936" - a man waving a rifle in his left hand as if in celebration or exhortation.
Image of poster advertising the 2025 procession and festival in Derby commemorating the 1883/4 silk mill lockout.
Decorative tea towel with the words Unity is Strength
The front cover of Peterloo by Robert Poole, Eva Schlunke and Polyp. It shows an eye in close-up with the reflection in the pupil of a mounted man with sword raised.
A screenshot from the website days.to. There are 1350 days until 7 November 2028, the scheduled date of the next US presidential election.
A photo of the front cover of volume 1 of "Sophie's World", the graphic novel based on Jostein Gaarder's novel. It shows the head and shoulders of a teenaged girl (Sophie) looking up at a pale round world on which Sophie is standing at the position of the south pole, so she appears upside down to the viewer.
A graphic from Bluesky showing the number 2,074,962 and reporting that I joined in November 2023.
Screen grab of the following text. Capitalism’s divide and rule ideology in a nutshell: @Nigel_Farage ‘earns’: *£98,000 A MONTH *For 32 hours ‘work’ *That’s 8 HOURS A WEEK *To sit in a GB News studio and tell you *Train drivers who earn less in a YEAR, & for longer DAILY hours than his MONTHLY *Are GREEDY