Category Archives: Modern parallels

The War

Every day brings another press extract in The Times’s ‘The First World War’ series, every week another email in their history of the war, and the stream of Tweets from the Imperial War Museum, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, historical institutions, the … Continue reading

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Checking my wiring

To reprise a motif of my last post, ‘the first pancake was a lump’, in the admirable Russian phrase (pervyi blin upal komom). That’s to say in English that my carefully prepared approach to a group of publishers went off at half-cock. … Continue reading

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Another wildcard!

After fifty years practice, I have no difficulty transliterating Russian into the Roman alphabet using three different Anglo-American systems; it’s so automatic I can practically switch my brain off as I do it… But I cannot hold the hundred or so … Continue reading

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‘The errors of Democracy’

I am very pleased to have been able to incorporate in my Bibliography an article that was published only three weeks ago: Thomas Lansdall-Welfare and others, ‘Content Analysis of 150 Years of British Periodicals’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, … Continue reading

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‘Iconography’

Lest it be thought that my previous post expressed a scepticism towards or weariness with blogging, I hasten to reassure followers: the pleasures and benefits of running Calderonia have been a fantastic bonus to writing the actual book. I never … Continue reading

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Calderonia: the way forward

A very happy New Year to our subscribers, followers and visitors. May 2017 be a good year for you all. I doubt whether any of us will agree with George Calderon’s ‘brutal’ assertion in a letter to Katharine Ripley of … Continue reading

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Guest post: Clare Hopkins, ‘One Man and his College’

Anyone who has ever watched an episode of Morse or Lewis will know that Oxford Colleges are well supplied with portraits. Founders, archbishops, prime ministers, and Nobel Prize winners gaze grandly down from the panelled walls of Dining Halls. Smaller … Continue reading

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Some ‘announcements’

I am staggered that my Introduction has passed its latest grilling, been tweaked yet again, and finalised as version 8. Deep down, though, I know I can’t write this sort of thing. To quote another favourite tag of Chekhovians, from Three … Continue reading

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Holroyd on biography

Whenever I re-read my typescript, I check the sources for a few facts or assertions chosen at random. The last time I was re-reading, one of the assertions that struck me as needing checking was that Augustus John had been … Continue reading

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‘The Long Shadow’, War Poetry, and Commemoration

  Faithful followers of this blog will recall my account on 16 December 2015 of Professor David Reynolds’s public lecture ‘Making Peace with the Great War: Centenary Reflections’. I have now read the book behind the lecture (see above) and … Continue reading

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Armistice Day, 1937

The first national two-minute silence was held on Armistice Day 1919. In 1945 it was transferred to the nearest Remembrance Sunday, commemorating the fallen of both world wars. After a campaign mounted by the British Legion, in 1995 the two-minute … Continue reading

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Guest post: Damian Grant, ‘Wilfred Owen commemorated in France’

    WILFRED OWEN AT ORS We have our own poet, Wilfred Owen, here in the village of Ors in northern France. The village lives along the slow canal tucked under Bois l’Evêque; the railway (steel scorning water) goes for … Continue reading

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And the asp jumped over the chimney sweeper!

That time of year is approaching again…the time of public readings of verse four of Laurence Binyon’s ‘For the Fallen’. I shall be listening carefully for who says ‘grow-not old’, who ‘grow not-old’, and who indeed ‘not grow old’ (see … Continue reading

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Guest post: Harvey Pitcher, ‘Calderon on Chekhov’

Some years have passed since I last took down my copy of Two Plays of Tchekhof: Translated, with an Introduction and Notes by George Calderon (1912). I remembered the book with affection, especially the introduction, but going back to old … Continue reading

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Rachel Cusk and George Orwell: Transitions to…where?

  As I walk into my local Waterstones, the first thing that catches my eye, straight ahead at one o’clock as it were, is three bookcases labelled NEW BIOGRAPHY. Other key subjects are ranged all around, but none of them … Continue reading

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Percy Lubbock: ‘Esoteric and intimate portraiture’

  One of Ruth Scurr’s aims in John Aubrey: My Own Life was to ‘produce a portrait’ of Aubrey, but naturally she did not write it in the biographical genre known as ‘literary portrait’. This genre seems to have grown out … Continue reading

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