Category Archives: Edwardian literature

The TLS link

At four o’clock this afternoon, Monday 19 October 1914, George and other patients set off on a very slow train to their ‘Hospital base’ at Dunkirk. It may seem odd that he had told Kittie to contact Theodore Cook, editor … Continue reading

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‘Rich gift of anger’ is roused

Calderon awoke this morning, Saturday 17 October 1914, ‘in a large comfortable double-bedded room, looking through tall windows into a big town square.’ He had breakfast in bed and ‘stayed there till eleven’. This afternoon he wrote to Kittie from … Continue reading

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9 October 1914

The 3rd Cavalry Division had arrived in Belgium with a crack infantry force, the 7th Division.  The latter’s orders were to go to Antwerp, sixty miles away, to assist in its defence.  Little did they know that on the night … Continue reading

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Language issues again

The version of Binyon’s ‘For the Fallen’ published in The Times (see my post of 21 September) seems to contain a misprint in line 11: ‘stanch’ instead of ‘staunch’ (‘to the end against odds uncounted’).  Last week I was in the … Continue reading

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The thickness of events…

When writing a biography, you can go for months in its subject’s life without hearing a word from them, as it were: no letters from them to anyone have survived, they are not recorded as having said anything to anyone … Continue reading

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Writer’s self-block?

There is no evidence that Calderon wrote anything new in 1914 after signing up.  Yet the previous seven months had been packed with literary-theatrical work: he had written or assembled most of his posthumous best-seller Tahiti, finished a pantomime The Brave Little … Continue reading

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