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 guests on things directly, tangentially and not even remotely connected with George Calderon, the source of the blog and subject of my 2018 biography (see Advertisement at end of this post). Keep the Comments coming, please, whether positive or negative!

Of course, what we all hope is that successful vaccination programmes and increasing understanding of the Covid-19 virus promise an end in 2022 to the worst epidemic Britain has suffered since the so-called Spanish Flu of 1918-19.

For Sam&Sam, the Anglo-Russian publisher that Sergei Bychkov and I founded in Moscow in 1974, the new year promises reaching more readers through our first public appearance in the U.K. — a stall at the annual conference of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies, 8-10 April at Robinson College, Cambridge.

As well as the cracking Russian- and English-language books already on our website, the first two months of 2022 will see the appearance there of a new book by Sergei about the ‘dissident’ priest Gleb Yakunin (1934-2014), and on 29 January (Chekhov’s birthday) the Sam&Sam edition of my biography of Anton will become available from Amazon:

Sam2 (U.K.) has done a brilliant job designing and typesetting a book in a format that is new for us. To quote from the blurb, Anton Chekhov: A Short Life ‘draws on all available material about Chekhov’s life, including his complete published correspondence, but offers a manageable reference biography for students and the general reader’. It comes in at 121 pages, with a detailed index, and I have added over 2000 words on subjects that readers asked me to expand on or that are dear to me, e.g. Chekhov’s view of a writer’s tasks, his sexuality, religion, humour. It is better than the first edition…I promise!

Patrick Miles

SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS

‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement

‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer

‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.