The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
George Calderon, 1912
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Captain of the 11
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
George Calderon c.1901
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)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
Guest post: Andrew Tatham, ‘A Group Photograph and the Pursuit of Personal History’
If there’s anything to be learned from biography it is that chance meetings can change lives. I first met Patrick Miles next to the warmth of the Aga in my cousin’s kitchen in 2006. I had met many of my … Continue reading
Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged A Group Photograph, Andrew Tatham, art films, Battle of Passchendaele, Belgium, biographies, biography, British Expeditionary Force, Cyril Kingerlee, Elaine Kingerlee, exhibitions, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Gyles Brandreth, history, I Shall Not Be Away Long, Jeremy Vine, John Carey, Keith Simpson MP, Martin Middlebrook, Melvyn Bragg, Norfolk Open Studios, Passchendaele, Patrick Miles, Stephen Lucena, The Great War, William Boyd, World War I, Ypres
1 Comment
Guest Post: John Pym, ‘The Soldier, the Professor and the Portrait Photographer’
(A reminiscence with Calderonian associations) Once, when I was a boy in the 1950s, my mother led me to a large mansion block in Kensington, West London, so she could introduce me to her last surviving uncle, Hubert Gough, a … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Albert Einstein, Alfred Kerr, Alliance Française, Alphabetical French-English List of Technical Military terms for Military Students, An Ethical System Based on the Laws of Nature, Anne Gough, Bernard Simon, Brigadier-General Sir John Edmond Gough, Charles Gough, Chelsea Home Guard, comments, Constance Cummings, Dardanelles, David Lloyd George, Diana Pym, Dictionary of Difficulties, Erich Ludendorff, Fauquissart, Fifth Army, Gallipoli, General Antoine, General Foch, General Sir Hubert Gough, George Calderon, George Franckenstein, George VI, Gertrud Cohn, Gerty Simon, Hubert Gough, Jack Pym, Jocelyn Herbert, John Pym, Johnnie Gough, Judith Kerr, Käthe Kollwitz, Kenneth Clark, Kittie Calderon, Kurt Weill, Langton Green, Lottle Lenya, Marius Deshumbert, Norman Stone, Passchendaele, Peggy Ashcroft, Sir John Lavery, Soldiering On, Staff College, The Blitz, The Great War, The Wiener Library, Tunbridge Wells, Valentine Gough, Violet Lubbock, Wilhelm Simon, William Rothenstein, World War I
3 Comments
Fit for purpose, then?
Some of my friends feel that I suffer from Low Frustration Tolerance (‘Foot Stuck on Indignation Pedal’, one calls it). They may be right, but I think Karl Popper would agree with me that you can’t improve the design of … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged accessions, acquisitions, archival management, archives, archivists, British archives, Cambridge University Library, cataloguing, Clare Hopkins, conservation, curation, customer care, fitness for purpose, France, George Calderon, Germany, guest posts, John Pym, Karl Popper, Kittie Calderon, Leeds Russian Archive, Liddell Hart Military Archives, line management, Low Frustration Tolerance, management consultants, Oxbridge college archives, safeguarding, Sandwich, St Petersburg, Sweden, SWOT analysis, Taganrog, The Bodleian Library, The British Library, The Imperial War Museum, The Women's Library Archive, Theatre Museum Collections V&A, Torquay Library, Trinity College Oxford
2 Comments
‘Spectator’
SAVE IT FOR THE (AMERICAN) NATION! How British archives fail us Patrick Miles It was a biographer’s dream. For decades Russianists had searched in vain for the archive of George Calderon, top Edwardian Slavist and the man who brought Chekhov’s … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
Tagged American archives, Anton Chekhov, archivists, attics, auction houses, bequests, Bernard Quaritch Ltd, Bertram Rota Ltd, biographies, biography, British archives, Cambridge University Library, celebrity, comments, cultural heritage, dilettantism, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Gertrude Bell, Harold Pinter, Harvard University, Jane Austen, Joseph Conrad, Kittie Calderon, learned helplessness, media image, patrimony, PR, research value, Rupert Brooke, The Bodleian Library, The British Library, The Calderon Papers, The Houghton Library, The Spectator, The Watsons, V. Pokrovskii, vultures, Wendy Cope
Leave a comment
Explanatory notes to ‘Thunderer’
I give here some of the facts from my and my team’s experience that lie behind statements I made in the preceding post, whilst preserving the anonymity of most of the offending institutions because I think to name them would … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Aleksandr Anikst, Anglo-Soviet Colloquium 'Chekhov on the British Stage', Anna Sica, Anton Chekhov, archival managers, archive donations, archive sales, Bernard Quaritch Ltd, British archives, Cambridge Modern and Medieval Languages Faculty Library, Cambridge Slavonic Library, Cambridge University Library, cataloguing, Chekhov Centenary Medal, collecting, comments, communication, conservation, customer care, Eleonora Duse, Elizabeth Hill, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Jane Austen, Lucjan Lewitter, Martin Shaw, Mikhail Gorbachev, Murray Edwards College, New Hall, Oleg Efremov, Ray Scrivens, Sotheby's, Special Collections, The Bodleian Library, The Brave Little Tailor, The British Library, The Great War, The Watsons, V. Pokrovskii, William Caine, World War I
Leave a comment
‘Thunderer’
Curate your own stuff – British archives can’t cope PATRICK MILES Thinking of depositing your family papers in a public archive? Be prepared for nobody to answer your emails, promises to be broken, cataloguing never to happen, and to discover … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged accountants, Anton Chekhov, archives, archivists, biographies, biography, British archives, cataloguing, celebrity, collecting, comments, conferences, conservation, curation, Dardanelles, exhibitions, funding, Gallipoli, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Harold Pinter, Jane Austen, Less Process, Martin Shaw, More Product, PR consultants, The British Library, The Great War, The Watsons, Third Battle of Krithia, United States of America, Wendy Cope, World War I, Ypres
2 Comments
Health Warning
I have decided I must go public about the nine years of frustration that the owner of the Calderon Papers and I endured as we tried to find a permanent home for them in a British archival institution. It was … Continue reading
Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged 'Thunderer', archival management, archive donations, archive sales, archives, biography, British archives, Calderon Family Papers, Cambridge, cataloguing, comments, communication, conservation, customer care, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Harvard University, Kittie Calderon, The Spectator, The Times
Leave a comment
‘People are reading an awful lot…
…and many booksellers are doing mail order,’ writes Susan Hill in The Spectator. I should say they are! Click the prompt at the bottom of this post to buy my blockbuster biography from Sam&Sam while stocks last! Obsessed with self-image, … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged activism, Anna Karenina, Anton Chekhov, biographies, British Expeditionary Force, Dardanelles, Edward VII, Gallipoli, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Kittie Calderon, Middlemarch, New Drama, Nina Corbet, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, polymathery, portfolio career, publicity, Russia, Sam&Sam, self-isolation, Susan Hill, Tahiti, The Edwardians, The Great War, The Spectator, Third Battle of Krithia, Times Literary Supplement, World War I, Ypres
Leave a comment
Weighty Calderonian matters
The above is described in an auction catalogue of 2001 as ‘A Victorian set of jockey scales by Youngs of Bear Street, London WC on oak stand with spiral-turned supports. Width 3ft’. The auction in question was of ‘The Residual Contents … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
Tagged A Room with a View, Anstey Guthrie, biographies, biography, body weight, Boulogne, Catherine Lubbock, Charles Evelyn Pym, Christopher Tebb, comments, Daniel Day Lewis, Dr Albert Tebb, E.M. Forster, Emmetts, Foxwold, Frederic Lubbock, George Calderon, height, Horace Pym, John Pym, Kittie Calderon, R. Ruthven Pym, Violet Pym, visitors books, weighing machine, weighing machines, Windy Corner
3 Comments
From the diary of a writer-publisher: 8
13 March Within seven hours of my last post going up, the organisers of the 2020 conference of the British Association of Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES) emailed everyone to say they were calling it off. Only an hour … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Archie Brown, BASEES, BASEES Conference, Black Crow, coronavirus, COVID-19, democracy, Edmund Burke, George Eliot, Marcel Proust, Matthew Paris, Middlemarch, Mikhail Gorbachev, newspapers, parliamentarianism, philosophy, quarantine, Rodric Braithwaite, Sam&Sam, self-isolation, Sergei Esenin, The Spectator, The Times
2 Comments
Bloggering on!
It is such a long time since I blogged, that followers would be excused for forgetting why the previous post has been up for five weeks. The reason is that we have been preparing for Sam&Sam’s Moscow-Cambridge stall at the … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged BASEES Conference, biographies, comments, coronavirus, COVID-19, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Harvey Pitcher, John Polkinghorne, marketing, Moscow, pandemics, publishing, Robinson College, Russianists, sales, Sam&Sam, Slavists, What Can We Hope For?
Leave a comment
Guest Post: John Pym on the film ‘1917’
In my humble opinion, one shouldn’t read too much into 1917 , which is, essentially, a ‘mission movie’ (the mission in this case being to deliver a letter and avert a doomed attack). The mission is very nearly ‘impossible’, and the … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged '1917', American Civil War, Brigadier-General Sir John Gough V.C., Captain Charles Evelyn Pym, commemoration, comments, D.W. Griffiths, films, General Sir Hubert Gough, George Calderon, John Pym, Kittie Calderon, messengers, mission films, production design, reviews, Sam Mendes, The Birth of a Nation, The Great War, trenches, Violet Lubbock, war films, World War I
Leave a comment
Guest Post: Laurence Brockliss, ‘George Calderon and the Demographic Revolution’
George Calderon married Kittie shortly before his thirty-second birthday. For a professional man at the turn of the twentieth century, this was not an uncommon age to wed. For the last ten years I have been leading a cross-generational study … Continue reading →