Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Captain of the 11
George Calderon c.1901
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
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
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
George Calderon, 1912
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)Recent 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)
Category Archives: Personal commentary
Man of sorrows
I was not planning or expecting to write this, but I feel I must, whether I prove right or wrong, because we all ought to be aware that the Russo-Ukrainian War is now at a critical point. It is the … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Armistice, artillery, Belorussia, betrayal, Chechnia, democracy, Emmanuel Macron, EU, France, Great Britain, Kiev, Mario Draghi, military strategy, missiles, NATO, Olaf Scholz, peace, peace deals, peace talks, petards, Poland, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Severodonetsk, special military operations, Syria, UK, Ukraine, United States of America, USA, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky, war
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No place like Home
Ukrainian literature is flourishing, even or especially as the war rages. Perhaps this will not surprise you, as whenever we see and hear Ukrainians on our televisions they are lively, articulate, cultured, witty, open to the world and dialogue, which … Continue reading
Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged comments, Crimean Tatars, dystopias, Fedor Dostoevskii, folklore, Huckleberry Finn, Lord of the Flies, Maria Miniailo, Michael Pursglove, Natalia Pniushkova, novels, political allegory, realism, Russo-Afghan War, The Children of Grad, The Russo-Ukrainian War, Ukraine, Ukrainian literature, Utopias, Waterloo Fiction, William Golding
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The Edwardian Re-turn
I hope you will forgive my pun on the title of one of the seminal works about the Edwaaaardian (as they pronounced it) era, Samuel Hynes’s The Edwardian Turn of Mind. A hundred and seven years ago today, at just after … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
Tagged Antiques Roadshow, BASEES Conference, bellybands, biography, bookmarks, Clays Ltd, Dardanelles, DNA, Edwardian Return, Gallipoli, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Greater Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Kittie Calderon, Russo-Ukrainian War, Samuel Hynes, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Ukraine, World War I
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Very Old Cambridge Tales: 2
SNAPSHOTS OF CAMBRIDGE ‘Ron Shakespeare’, a casual at the Arts, was so plastered the other evening that he actually got caught on stage at the end of a scene-change. The Stage Manager did his nut and threatened this time to … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged anecdotes, Arts Theatre, Bird Sanctuary, butterflies, Cambridge, Cambridge colleges, Cambridge Tales, Cambridge University Library, dry-stone walls, fishing tackle, Gallyon's, gardeners, General Election, hummingbirds, Junior Bursar, Labour Party, liberalism, moral philosophy, Nigeria, Ron Shakespeare, snapshots, Trinity College, United States of America, William Gerhardie
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Very Old Cambridge Tales: 1
A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF GRANTA POEM: Horror O The Studio, Fowlmere. 4.11.67 … Continue reading
A writer-publisher’s Ukrainian diary: 5
7 May 2022 People are, I know, frightened by Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons. I have suggested that even western leaders have been sufficiently frightened by these threats to be militarily unproactive. This means that Putin doesn’t need to … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Anatolii Chubais, anecdotes, Boris Yel'tsin, comedy, comments, Commonwealth of Independent States, Czechoslovakia, Empire style, Finland, Hungary, irony, Jill Biden, Leonid Brezhnev, Mikhail Gorbachev, Moscow, Nancy Pelosi, nuclear weapons, Pavel Palazhchenko, Pierre Trudeau, Poland, rakes, Russo-Ukrainian War, Stalin, The Crimea, Ukraine, Victory Day, Vladimir Putin, Vladislav Zubok, Volodymyr Zelensky, World War 2
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War and woof poetry
Judging by allusions and quotations in his speeches, Volodymyr Zelensky either has a good knowledge of literature himself, or his team does. Unlike Putin, he speaks in a cultured manner, beautifully clearly and expressively, with a literary turn. In an … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Alexander Blok, Alexander Pushkin, Berlin, compromise, dogs, Nazi Germany, Peter Levi, propaganda, Red Army, Robin Milner-Gulland, Russia, Russian poetry, sentimentality, Sergei Yesenin, talant, To Russia's Slanderers, translation, USSR, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vladimir Putin, Volodomyr Zelensky, war poetry, World War 2, Yevgeny Yevtushenko
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A writer-publisher’s Ukrainian diary: 4
23 April 2022 It is St George’s Day, hypothetically William Shakespeare’s birthday, and we are in Stratford-upon-Avon witnessing the civic celebrations, which are beautifully done, inclusive, happy, humorous, almost a Spring flower festival, and a really moving tribute to Shakespeare’s … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Aleksei Gromyko, Aleksei Kozyrev, Alexander Gorchakov, atonement, catacomb Christians, Charles Talleyrand, Chester Wilmot, comments, David Aaronovitch, David Petraeus, General Dvornikov, General Gerasimov, General Mezintsev, Henry VI, Joachim von Ribbentrop, KGB, Khar'kiv, Mariupol, medical diagnoses, military strategy, Moldova, Moscow Patriarchate, Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, NATO, Nikolai Gogol, proxy war, repentance, Rett Syndrome, Russia, Saddam Hussein, salients, Sergei Lavrov, St George's Day, steroids, Stratford-upon-Avon, tank battles, Tariq Aziz, The Donbas, Transnistria, trench warfare, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky, Wagner Group, William Shakespeare, World War 2, World War I
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A Not Nursery Rhyme
DANDLING SONG … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged cats, chub, cockroaches, comments, cowboys, dandling songs, dark blue, folklore, hares, KGB, kikimora, mice, nonsense rhymes, nursery rhymes, oven-prong, poems, pribautki, Rus', Russia, The New Dark Blue Cowboys
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The strange workings of ‘tourbillions of Time’
Long-term followers of Calderonia, and readers of George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, will know that I’m interested in different forms of Time and very fond of the expression ‘tourbillions of Time’ from Robert Graves’s poem ‘On Portents’… Piecing together the narrative behind … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged 'Dandling Song', 'On Portents', aleatory, chronotopes, colours, dark blue, Edward Lear, folklore, George Calderon, Igor' Stravinsky, KGB, Lenin's mausoleum, Margaret Thatcher, naive, nonsense poetry, nursery rhymes, Penguin Russian Course, pribautki, Robert Graves, Russian grammar, Russian language, teaching Russian, The New Dark Blue Cowboys, tourbillions of Time, Valdimir Putin
1 Comment
‘The negation of everything worth living for’
In 2010, when the Putin Project was still just a monocracy and one could converse freely over the phone with friends in Russia, I remarked to one that Russia seemed to have ‘reached about 1892’, i.e. a point during the … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Alexander III, anarchy, Andrei Amal'rik, Angela Merkel, anti-Semitism, apocalypse, autocracy, censorship, Communism, democracy, dogs, Estonia, ideology, irrationalism, Jewish people, Joseph Conrad, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Moscow Patriarchate, Otto von Bismarck, perestroika, Poland, Putin Project, rule of law, satanry, State capitalism, Ukraine, USSR, Vladimir Putin
2 Comments
A writer-publisher’s Ukrainian diary: 2
5 April 2022 When I contemplated the image from Kyiv that I posted last week, as well as Bruegel I thought of Isaac Babel’s stories Red Cavalry about the Russo-Polish War of 1919-21. Some of that war took place in … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged 'The Prince', Aleksandr Lukashenko, Andrew Tatham, Anton Chekhov, atrocities, Babi Yar, Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Centre, Belarus, Belorussia, Bucha, Chris Deverell, comments, Crimea, David McDuff, Donald Trump, Donbas, EU, Fiona Hill, Georg Trakl, Isaac Babel, Joe Biden, Kyiv, L'viv, Mariupol, Military Intelligence, NATO, Nazis, Niccolo Machiavelli, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Red Cavalry, The Times, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, weapons, World War I, Zbrucz
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A writer-publisher’s Ukrainian diary: 1
16 March 2022 Tony Blair has said that to keep telling Putin all the things we won’t do in the face of Putin’s carnage (e.g. enforce a no-fly zone, give Ukraine Polish MiGs, co-occupy and safeguard Western Ukraine with the … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Alexander Litvinenko, Alexei Navalny, Anna Politkovskaya, Belgium, comments, fear, Iuliia Skripal, Joe Biden, Kaiser Wilhelm II, MiG fighters, peace negotiations, Pityriasis rosea, Roman Abramovich, Sergei Skripal, The Times, Tony Blair, Treaty of London, Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky, World War I
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Bruegel, reality and truth
We all, I imagine, have photographs of terrible events (World War 1, say, the Holocaust, or Hiroshima) indelibly seared on our brains. Where Ukraine 2022 is concerned, the above is the one I shall never forget. The face is straight … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged comments, death, Four Quartets, grief, Hiroshima, Kiev, love, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, reality, Russia, T.S. Eliot, The Holocaust, truth, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, World War I
2 Comments
How would I write it now?
Many authors never re-read their own books. One can understand why. Some must feel that it’s not necessary as it can’t change anything (unless the book is about to have an ‘improved’ edition). Others, like George Orwell apparently, simply don’t … Continue reading →