Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
George Calderon c.1901
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Captain of the 11
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
George Calderon, 1912
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Basic form of the Calderon coat of armsRecent Comments
- John Pym on Two anniversaries We are all, followers and occasional contributors, beholden to you, Patrick, for reminding us for ten years that the past is worth remembering and for keeping alive the... (August 17, 2024 at 1:06 pm)
- Patrick Miles on A second Family Bible Very many thanks for fleshing that point out -- and so entertainingly! (I love your reference to creative writing courses, which are a phobia of mine.) Although several... (August 2, 2024 at 11:03 am)
- Laurence Brockliss on A second Family Bible When I say that the British Republic of Letters was dead by 1880, I don't mean to imply that thereafter there were no men and women outside universities, institutes and... (August 2, 2024 at 9:19 am)
- Patrick Miles on A second Family Bible Thank you for devoting valuable time to writing this fascinating Comment. If I may say so, it is awe-inspiring to see the author of a monumental work standing back from that... (July 31, 2024 at 5:32 pm)
- Laurence Brockliss on A second Family Bible Male Professionals in Nineteenth Century Britain was a new departure for me. For most of my adult life I have worked on seventeenth and eighteenth century France. It is also... (July 24, 2024 at 11:31 am)
Author Archives: Patrick Miles
Cambridge Tales 8: ‘Black Tie’
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged black ties, brain haemorrhages, Cambridge, Cambridge Tales, college life, Dante, funerals, Jonathan Palmer, Mikhail Bakhtin, mourning, Peter Cathercole, postgraduates, student pranks, The Divine Comedy, The Iliad, The University Arms, undergraduates, undertakers, wakes
2 Comments
Very Old Cambridge Tales 3: ‘Reflected images’
It was the Saturday of the fourth week of the Michaelmas Term. Half Term. As he stepped purposefully from the steakhouse on Trinity Street, where he had feasted on the 10/6d gammon menu, Roger Johns suddenly realised that he had … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Boots, Cambridge Market Square, Cambridge Tales, Cambridge Union Society, Cambridge University, Che Guevara, clothes, glasses, hats, History Today, Leon Trotsky, Louis Philippe, mirrors, opticians, Oxfam, pith helmets, Raffles, reflected images, reflections, Rose Crescent, self images, semiotics, Sherlock Holmes, shop windows, spectacles, students, Trinity Street, undergraduates, W.H. Smith, young men, young women
2 Comments
Guest post by John Pym: One of my first Communists
Patrick Miles named me the dedicatee of his story My First Communist published here in two parts in the spring, so let me return the compliment with this ‘sketch from memory’ of the redoubtable Yvonne Kapp – one of my own … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary, Uncategorized
Tagged Bertolt Brecht, biography, Central Books, Claire Tomalin, Communism, Communist Party of Great Britain, Diana Pym, Dorothea Gough, East Germany, Edmond Kapp, Edward Aveling, Edward Wolfe, Eleanor Marx, Eric Hobsbawm, Frederic Raphael, Gustave Flaubert, Gwyn A. Williams, Highgate, Jack Pym, Janna Kapp, Jenny Marx, Jenny von Westphalen, Karl Marx, Lady Gough, Madame Bovary, Margaret Mynatt, Marx Memorial Library, Michael Blakemore, Michael Foot, Nazis, refugees, The Internationale, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Time Will Tell, Vizetelly & Co., William Rothenstein, Yvonne Kapp
4 Comments
The magnificent Mary Ann
Long-term followers of Calderonia will recall that I had always had a theory that the person who taught George to speak Russian credibly before he set out for St Petersburg in 1895 was a ‘Mrs Shapter’, but in my biography … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Alexander I, Andrew Jones, Anton Chekhov, biographies, biography, Camille Silvy, Clara Calderon, Constance Garnett, Evan Hodgson, Exeter, Francke family, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Glasgow Repertory Theatre, Harry Leeke Gibbs, Harvey Pitcher, John Hodgson, John Shapter, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Manya Guseva, Mary Ann Shapter, Mary Gibbs Shapter, Michael Pursglove, Mrs Shapter, Museum of the Home, National Portrait Gallery, Nicholas I, Olga Novikoff, oracy, P.H. Calderon, Russia, Sally Jones, silver, sketchbooks, St John's Wood Clique, St Petersburg, The Seagull, The Smiths of Moscow, theatre, Thomas Shapter, toddy ladle, Whishaw family, Yeames family
2 Comments
Cambridge Tales 7: ‘The Folding Party’
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Bedroom, Blue Pagoda, Cambridge, Cambridge Tales, Carcanet, Chris Hardie, Friedrich Hölderlin, G.W.F. Hegel, Gitanes, haiku, Helios, John Milton, Julian Slawianski, Karl Marx, Leonard Cohen, parties, Pink Floyd, poetry, poetry magazines, River Cam, students, suicide, Tintagel, undergraduates
Leave a comment
Guest post by Harvey Pitcher: Melikhovo 2004
This recollection goes back almost twenty years, but it does not seem that long ago. As I grow older, time does not slow down, as one might expect, but races away at an alarming rate. Chekhov had died in 1904 … Continue reading
Cambridge Tales 6: ‘The Tower’
A small brown-man had a narrow bedroom, a spacious living-room, and a gyp-room (more like a galley) at the top of a Gothic quadrangle. The living-room contained a fluted white mantelpiece with a gas-fire, a moth-eaten charcoal grey sofa against … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged bowler hats, brown-man, Cambridge colleges, Cambridge Tales, Franz Kafka, paranoia, persecution mania, towers, writer's block, writers
5 Comments
From the diary of a writer-publisher: 23
16 May 2023 The suspense about the Ukrainian ‘counter-offensive’ is terrible. I hope it will last. It winds the Russians up and keeps them guessing. Moreover, except at Bakhmut, Russian forces have been in deep defensive positions for months now, … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Badenweiler, Bakhmut, Brexit, butterflies, conceptual photography, conservation, counter offensive, Crimea, Dr Schwörer, Duke of Burgundy Fritillary, fakes, Kyiv, Lavrentii Beria, Le Monde Diplomatique, Leo Rabeneck, military defeat, Moskovskii Komsomolets, newspapers, Olga Knipper-Chekhova, photographs, Pinterest, Queen of Spain Fritillary, Riodinidae, Russian Army, The Lake District, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, W.H. Smith, Zaporizhzhia
1 Comment
Short story (concluded): ‘My First Communist’
In the Easter holidays Peter went on a skiing trip to Switzerland organised by the headmaster. I could have gone myself, but my parents didn’t have the money. Privately, I was intrigued that the Freres could afford it either, but … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary, Uncategorized
Tagged A.E.U., Body Odour, Brighton, Christianity, Communism, demonstrations, G.C.E., Helen Minter, N.U.M., Russian language, skiing, Switzerland, tortoises, Utopia, Utopianism, zoology
Leave a comment
Short story: ‘Crox’
… Continue reading →