Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
George Calderon, 1912
Captain of the 11
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
George Calderon c.1901
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Recent Comments
- Patrick Miles on Guest Post by John Pym: A Soviet film of ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ Many, many thanks for reprising, Johnnie, for I know how busy you are. How serendipitous that you had just seen a 'live' performance of Murnau's b&w Sunrise! I gather from... (March 14, 2025 at 10:21 am)
- John Pym on Guest Post by John Pym: A Soviet film of ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ March 8, 2025: Last evening, I watched a digital transfer of a black-and-white movie, made by an expatriate German in California nearly a hundred years ago, in a packed town... (March 10, 2025 at 4:36 pm)
- Patrick Miles on Guest Post by John Pym: A Soviet film of ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ Your response here is (obviously) deeply informed... Thank you very much indeed. In comparing the coach ride to Simferopol in Heifitz's film with the chariot race in Ben-Hur... (March 5, 2025 at 10:01 am)
- John Pym on Guest Post by John Pym: A Soviet film of ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ Black-and-white camerawork was, I suspect, as natural to the director of The Lady with the Little Dog as breathing in and out or eating his breakfast. I doubt that he was... (February 28, 2025 at 11:01 pm)
- Patrick Miles on Guest Post by John Pym: A Soviet film of ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ We are deeply favoured and honoured to publish on Calderonia the eminent film critic John Pym's magnificent tribute to Heifitz's film The Lady with the Little Dog, perfectly... (February 24, 2025 at 10:56 am)
Category Archives: Edwardian character
Far End draws closer
On 26 January I blogged about the house Far End at Kingham in Oxfordshire, which I had heard about for the first time from Mrs Mary Lowe, whom we traced as the copyright holder for unpublished works of the American … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Anne Douglas Sedgwick, Balbec, Basil de Sélincourt, biographies, biography, D.H. Lawrence, Dardanelles, F.R. Leavis, Far End, Gallipoli, Garsington, George Calderon, Giotto, Ian Lowe, Julia Chapin Alsop, Kingham, Kittie Calderon, Lady Ottoline Morrell, Laurence Binyon, Marcel Proust, Mary Lowe, New College Oxford, Oxfordshire, Petersfield, Piccadilly, Sir Edward Grey, Swan & Edgar, Tante, The Encounter, The Good Life, The Great War, The Little French Girl, Third Battle of Krithia, vegetables, Virago Classics, Walt Whitman, William Blake, Women in Love, World War 2, World War I
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I accept the white feather
I am hoping to attend the ceremony at Ors on 4 November this year to commemorate the death of Wilfred Owen a hundred years ago (see Damian Grant’s post of 4 November 2016), and thought we might go on from … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged A Group Photograph, Alexis de Gunzberg, Andrew Tatham, Armistice, Auschwitz, Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, Clare Hopkins, Colonel Gordon Wilson, commemoration, comments, Damian Grant, George Calderon, Helles, Journey's End, Last Post, Menin Gate, Ors, R.C. Sheriff, Royal Horse Guards, Sanctuary Wood, The Blues, The Great War, Thiepval, Thiepval Memorial, Verdun, white feather, Wilfred Owen, World War I, Ypres, Zillebeke
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Cogitations of an indexer
A profound thank you to all who commented or emailed me about the illustrations to my biography. Nearly everyone expressed a preference for having them in the text as close as possible to their mention, so that is what I … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
Tagged 'The Dead', Ada, biographies, biography, Charles Dickens, comments, computer programs, Dante Alighieri, Edward Garnett, Edward Lear, Edward VII, geological terms, George Calderon, Helen Smith, indexes, James Joyce, Jenny Uglow, John Aubrey, Joseph Conrad, Kittie Calderon, Marcel Proust, Nina Corbet, Occam's Razor, Ruth Scurr
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Far End: a new Calderonian world
The greatest pleasure to have come out of the hair-tearing ordeal of obtaining permission to publish quotations from scores of letters to George and Kittie written a hundred years ago (see 17 April 2017) has been to correspond with Mrs … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Acton Reynald, Anne Douglas Sedgwick, Anton Chekhov, Basil de Sélincourt, biography, Bruce Richmond, Chipping Norton, comments, Far End, Foxwold, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Goncourt Brothers, Hugh Walpole, Ivan Turgenev, Kingham, Kittie Calderon, Lady Ottoline Morrell, Laurence Binyon, Petersfield, Sir Edward Grey, The Encounter, The Great War, Victoria Cholmondeley, World War I, Ypres
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Attempting to not-bore for England about limericks
I must apologise to all subscribers for their having received notification last week of a blog post that had no text in it! This was the result of human error, aka Aussie Flu. Unfortunately, when I did write the text … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Alfred Tennyson, biographies, biography, comments, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Lear, Evey Pym, Foxwold, Franz Kafka, George Calderon, Horatio Nelson, Jenny Uglow, John Pym, Joseph Brodsky, Karl Marx, Kittie Calderon, Lewis Carroll, limericks, Marie Curie, Rudyard Kipling, Russia, Violet Pym, Wadham College
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An Edwardian Christmas
Happy Christmas to All Our Readers, and thank you for following Calderonia into its fourth year! At Heathland Lodge, George and Kittie’s home from 1901 to 1912 in the Vale of Health, they always staged a large family Christmas, despite … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian marriage, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Arts and Crafts, biography, British Museum, Briton Rivière, Buckingham Mansions, Catherine Lubbock, Christmas, Clara Calderon, Clara Sumner, comments, dogs, Ethel Armstead, Frank Calderon, Frederic Lubbock, George Calderon, Hampstead, Heathland Lodge, Helen Binyon, Joan Calderon, Johnny Jones, Jones, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Marguerite Calderon, Mary Hamilton, Philip Calderon, Tahiti, Vale of Health, vets, W.H. Gray
2 Comments
Own a commemorative masterpiece
I first wrote about the above book on 10 February 2016 . I suggest going now to http://www.groupphoto.co.uk/the-book for Andrew Tatham’s own description of it and how it came about. As you will see, it has been praised to the skies by communicators … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged 8th Battalion Royal Berkshire Regiment, A Group Photograph, Andrew Tatham, artworks, Battle of Loos, biographies, Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, commemoration, comments, family histories, George Calderon, Gyles Brandreth, Jeremy Vine, Melvyn Bragg, Paul Cummins, poppies, Royal Berkshires, The Great War, Tom Piper, William Boyd, World War I
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Brexit: a modest theory
The Times digest of events in the Great War and Mike Schuster’s Great War Project continue to come down the wires once a week, together with scores of daily Tweets from the Imperial War Museum, from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, from … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Battle of Mons, Battle of Passchendaele, Battle of the Somme, Belgium, Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, Brexit, British Expeditionary Force, commemoration, comments, EU Referendum, Europe, Mike Schuster, Paul Cummins, The Great War, The Times, Tom Piper, Winston Churchill, World War I
3 Comments
Dulc(e) et decor(um) est…
I have always been uncomfortable with what I take to be the popular interpretation of Wilfred Owen’s poem Dulce et Decorum est. My first experience of it was in about 1962 from the lips of our young English teacher, a … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged A.J.P. Taylor, Alan Clark, British Expeditionary Force, commemoration, comments, Dulce et Decorum, Edward Thomas, George Calderon, Henry Newbolt, Horace, Jessie Pope, Joan Littlewood, kitchen sink drama, Laurence Binyon, Rome, scansion, Seamus Heaney, The Great War, Wilfred Owen, Wilfred Owen Association (France), World War I
12 Comments
Russia (concluded)
A hundred years ago today Red Guards began occupying key installations in St Petersburg. By early tomorrow morning the Winter Palace had been infiltrated and the Provisional Government arrested. The Bolsheviks, a party of fanatical, fascistic Utopians, subsequently seized power … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Alexander Navalny, Andrei Amal'rik, biographies, biography, Bolshevik coup, Bolshevik Party, Bolsheviks, Cheka, comments, Communism, Democratic Movement, dissidents, Duma, Edmund Burke, emigration, genocide, George Calderon, German Federal Republic, Irish Potato Famine, John Hamilton, KGB, Kittie Calderon, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Moskovskii Komsomolets, Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, nationalism, paranoia, Progress Party, Red Guards, Russian Revolution, secret police, St Petersburg, United Russia Party, Vladimir Putin, Winter Palace
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Russia (continued)
Chapter four of my biography, ‘Who Had He Been?’, relates amongst other things what George did in Russia between 12 October 1895 and the summer of 1897. I think it will be a revelation to a lot of people. It … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary, Uncategorized
Tagged Alexander III, Anton Chekhov, ARLS, Armistice Festival, biographies, biography, Clara Calderon, comments, Friedrich Nietzsche, G.W.F. Hegel, George Calderon, George Orwell, Joseph Stalin, Khodynka Field, Kittie Calderon, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Lev Tolstoi, Monthly Review, Moscow, Nicholas II, Olga Novikoff, Pall Mall Gazette, Percy Lubbock, Petr Kropotkin, Sergei Stepniak-Kravchinskii, St Petersburg, Standard, The Great War, Vladimir Putin, W.T. Stead, World War I, Ypres
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Is a dog literally…forever?
An alternative title to this post would be: ‘Why are there no cats’ cemeteries?’ Three weekends running we have visited local stately homes that were inhabited in the Edwardian period, and each of them had a Pets Cemetery in its … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged 'Kay's Crib', animal souls, Archie Ripley, biographies, biography, Bunty, cats, comments, Dardanelles, dogs, Elizabeth Ellis, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Ginger, John Polkinghorne, Jones, Kittie Calderon, Mary Hamilton, Nina Corbet, Percy Lubbock, Pets Cemeteries, Russian Orthodoxy, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Tommy, White Raven, World War I
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Proto-Poldark?
Many followers will have realised, I think, that I kept my previous post in pole position for a month because I thought it might give my last batch of prospective publishers a good idea of the book’s scope and, dare … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged 'Q', Arthur Quiller-Couch, Bruce Richmond, Clare Hopkins, comments, Cornish novel, Cornishness, Cornwall, Daphne du Maurier, David Bran, Derwent May, genre, George Calderon, Gilbert Murray, Helen Dunmore, Ivan Turgenev, kailyard school, Morley Roberts, novel, Percy Lubbock, Poldark, Times Literary Supplement, topos, Trescas, Virginia Woolf, Zennor in Darkness
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Edwardian love, sex and the ‘T’other’
The Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook 2017 is undoubtedly right to intone the mantra ‘edit, review, revise and then edit again’, but when you have read your 420-page typescript as many times as I have in the last six months, and made over … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian marriage, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Acton Reynald, Alice Keppel, Anita Leslie, appearances, Archie Ripley, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, biographies, biography, comments, Dardanelles, Diana Souhami, discretion, Emmetts, Foxwold, George Calderon, homosexuality, John Pym, Kittie Calderon, Lesbia Corbet, Lily Langtry, Marcel Proust, monogamy, Mormons, Nina Astley, Nina Corbet, Paul Boyer, secrecy, sex, spin, T'other, Tahiti, The Duchess of Duke Street, The Edwardians, The Great War, The Victorians, Third Battle of Krithia, Tom Quinn, visitors books, Walter Corbet, William Rothenstein, World War I
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A P.S. to paradox
After the flights of fancy of my previous post, I ought to make it clear that what really interests me about paradox is (1) why were Edwardian writers, particularly George Calderon, so mad on it, (2) is it yet another … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged amateurism, Bertolt Brecht, biographies, biography, Bryan, comments, Cromwell: Mall o'Monks, Fabian Society, fun, Geminae, George Bernard Shaw, George Calderon, James Wren, Jim Al-Khalili, Lao Tsu, Oscar Wilde, paradox, Raymond Smullyan, Revolt, Taoism, The Fountain, The Lieutenant's Heroine, The Two Talismans, wu wei
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George Calderon and the gender pay gap
Obviously I believe George Calderon’s life is interesting in itself — dramatic, even — but another reason I have written his biography is that many of the issues of the day that he responded to are still with us (e.g. … Continue reading →