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- 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)
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- James Muckle on George Calderon: a tribute:
By golly, I do enjoy contentious essays like this.…
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Patrick Miles alludes to Percy Lubbock’s 'Earlham' (Jonathan Cape,…
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Hi, I recently purchased some items from a charity…
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Oh Patrick! I can see that being George's biographer/blogger…
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Category Archives: Personal commentary
A year of promise
A very happy new year to all Calderonia’s subscribers and viewers! Thank you for staying with us through 2021, which was our eighth calendar year, and I can promise you at least another year of posts from me and my … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Anton Chekhov: A Short Life, BASEES, biographies, British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies, Calderonia, comments, COVID-19, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Gleb Yakunin, Jim Miles, pandemics, promises, Robinson College, Sam&Sam, Sergei Bychkov, Spanish Flu, The Great War, World War I
2 Comments
Guest post by Jim Miles: ‘DONG!’
The most striking aspect of Japan, right from the moment I arrived, was how different from the UK it wasn’t. People talk about culture shock and in particular how Japan ‘just does things differently’ (often with an almost-patronising ‘isn’t this … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged bells, Buddhist monks, Buddhist temples, Cambridge, Casillero del Diablo, Christmas, culture shock, England, etiquette, food, friendliness, Goto family, islands, James Miles, Japan, KFC, kindergarten, language teaching, New Year, population densities, Shōgatsu, Snickers, Toyohashi, traffic lights
4 Comments
Sensei Pulvers’ miraculous year
A friend of Jim’s in Japan brought Roger Pulvers and me together three years ago. The friend referred to Pulvers in the most natural way as ‘Sensei Pulvers’. And this is totally appropriate. Anyone whose children have attended karate classes … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged annus mirabilis, entanglement, EPR Effect, fly swats, George Calderon, haiku, If There Were No Japan, Japan, Japanese poetry, John Polkinghorne, Masaoka Shiki, Miyazawa Kenji, My Japan: A Cultural Memoir, Night on the Milky Way Train, Poems 2020, poetry in translation, Polish poetry, polymaths, quantum physics, Roger Pulvers, Russian poetry, sensei, Sergei Esenin, snails, The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn, The Unmaking of an American, Wholly Esenin
1 Comment
‘These magnificent metal beasts’
Sam2 gave me this book last Christmas and it’s been a source of endless delight ever since. At 8.5 x 12.0 inches and beautifully produced, it may seem like a coffee table book, but it is much more. I have … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged aesthetics, balance, cigarettes, cold drinks, comments, design, hot drinks, Japan, Japanese art, Japanese poetry, Japanese technology, machines, photographs, Sam2, semiotics, souvenirs, T-shirts, Tim Easley, Tokyo, vending machines
3 Comments
‘Deep North’…and far out?
This was only the second ‘Japanese’ book that I ever read after The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse, and of course there was a connection: I won’t say that Bashō (1644-94) is my favourite Japanese haiku-writer, but he’s surely the … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Bashō, boundary situations, civilisations, classic, collaboration, comments, dialogue, disciples, ethics, fatalism, George Calderon, haiku, hokka, Japan, Japanese literature, journeys, morality, Narrow Road to the Far North, Nobuyuki Yuasa, Penguin Book of Japanese Verse, Penguin Classics, Records of a Weather-exposed Skeleton, resignation, Roger Pulvers, shrines, sociability, symbols, Tahiti, taigan no kaji, travelogues, world classics, Zen Buddhism
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A new photograph of George Calderon
Whilst sorting his family papers, Mr John Pym recently found the photograph below, which undoubtedly shows George Calderon on the right. It is a contact print of a photograph, obviously not in sharp focus, which Mr Pym and I believe … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
Tagged biographies, biography, boaters, Catherine Lubbock, Charles Evelyn Pym, comments, Emmetts, Evey Pym, Foxwold, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Harvard University, Houghton Library, identification, Jane Hannah Backhouse Pym, Jim Corbet, John Pym, Johnnie Pym, Kittie Calderon, Lubbock family, Massachusetts, Nina Corbet, Violet Pym, visitors books, Weigh-in Book
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‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’: Fragments of a response
When I read the novel for the first time, I was bemused by the in-your-face tone of the narrator, who is even given to exclamatory comments: ‘But that is how men are!’ — ‘But Emma said No!’ — ‘Yes, she … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Clifford Chatterley, comments, Constance Chatterley, D.H. Lawrence, Damian Grant, display, Doris Lessing, God, kittiwakes, Lady Chatterley, Lady Chatterley's Lover, letters, marriage, narrators, Oliver Mellors, orgasm, PTSD, sex, Sons of God, The Great War, The Rainbow, William Gerhardie, Women in Love, World War 2, World War I
1 Comment
Guest post by Damian Grant: ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ and ‘The Winter’s Tale’
This nineteenth-century engraving of Florizel and Perdita does indeed make them look — to use Lady Chatterley/Connie’s dismissive phrase about the Elizabethans — somewhat ‘upholstered’. In all the excitement — which has never quite subsided — about the sexual explicitness … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged 'Snake', Algernon Swinburne, Byzantium, Charles Baudelaire, comments, Constance Reid, D.H. Lawrence, Florizel, Forest of Arden, George Eliot, High Park Wood, John James Audubon, John Keats, John Milton, Juno, Lady Chatterley, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Mary Russell Mitford, Michaelis, Mrs Bolton, Mrs Gaskell, Oliver Mellors, Perdita, Proserpina, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, sex, sexuality, Sir Clifford Chatterley, T.S. Eliot, The Elizabethans, The Great War, The Winter's Tale, W.B. Yeats, wild flowers, William Shakespeare, World War I, Wragby
2 Comments
Lady with little dog/Gamekeeper with spaniel
Our guest posts on Women in Love opened an admirable exchange of Comments about all sorts of aspects of Lawrence’s work. I think there was a feeling, however, that we were left with an elephant in the room: Lady … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged A Propos of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', Anna Sergeevna, Anton Chekhov, Clifford Chatterley, comments, compassion, Connie, Constance Chatterley, D.H. Lawrence, Damian Grant, Dmitrii Gurov, dogs, ends, Flossie, Lady Chatterley, Lady Chatterley Trial, Lady Chatterley's Lover, love, Mark Schorer, narrative endings, new marriage, Oliver Mellors, Paul Cézanne, Penguin Books, Pomeranian dogs, roman adultère, sex, tenderness, The Lady with the Little Dog, The Winter's Tale, William Shakespeare
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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 15
2 June I have never known the cow parsley so high in front of my shed… 11 June We have completed our ‘hardcopy marketing’ for Edna’s Diary. 130 free copies have gone out to stroke clubs, NHS speech and language therapy … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged ADC Theatre, Anton Chekhov, aphasia, As You Like It, biographies, comments, copyright, cow parsley, Cymbeline, Edna's Diary, Hesperus Press, Lady Chatterley's Lover, marketing, Melanie Derbyshire, musicals, NHS, Sasha Regan, Shaftesbury Theatre, sheds, social media, Stroke Association UK, Sylvia Krystel
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BEING AWARE OF APHASIA
In the last week of National Aphasia Awareness Month, I am very pleased to post these two images sent to me by the Aphasia Alliance: P.S. Stroke Association UK’s income has dropped by half during the pandemic. The organisation has … Continue reading
National Aphasia Awareness Month: A message of hope
This is National Aphasia Awareness Month (NAAM), but the campaign is global. Aphasia is a disorder that impairs the expression and understanding of language, as well as reading and writing. It may be caused by head injury, a brain tumor, … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged aphasia, Aphasia Awareness Month, AphasiaAwareness, body language, brain, carers, comments, communication, CommunicationAccess, Dutch, Edna's Diary, French, hope, intonation, NAAM, National Aphasia Association, National Aphasia Awareness Month, physiotherapy, Sam&Sam, speech and language therapy, Stroke, Stroke Association UK, stroke care, stroke clubs, strokes, the human brain, Wales, Welsh, wheelchairs
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Edna’s Diary: the background
Sometime in 2012 Harvey Pitcher asked me if I would give a talk the following March to Sheringham Stroke Group, of which he was Secretary. It was an attractive invitation, especially as there is a history of Stroke on my … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Amazon, aphasia, Aphasia Awareness Month, Clare Ungerson, Edna Miles, Edna's Diary, Erich Reisfeld, Fleur Taylor, frontispiece, Harvey Pitcher, hip operations, Sandwich, Sheringham Stroke Support Group, Stroke Association UK, stroke clubs, The Holocaust, The Kitchener Camp, The Third Reich, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yours
2 Comments
There!
To our astonishment, Amazon suddenly announced to the world that Edna’s Diary had been published on 6 May — which was before they had told us it had been accepted! So here it is, folks, fully available now in ‘real time’: … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Amazon, aphasia, Aphasia Awareness Month, book covers, cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular disease, Edna Miles, Edna's Diary, independent publishing, publishers, Sam&Sam, self-publishing, speech and language therapy, Stroke, Stroke Association UK, strokes, Tippex
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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 16
17 November 2021 Today at 9.54 a.m. I emailed my 408-line poem Making Icons to the excellent Long Poem Magazine, the only organ in Britain that publishes poems at least 75 lines long. The magazine appears twice a year and November … Continue reading →