Tag Archives: George Calderon

Guest posts and…George a Labour man?

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that biography is going through a particularly fertile and innovative time. I’m always interested, then, in biographies about new subjects and biographies that tell their stories in new ways. Next week, blogmaster … Continue reading

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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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‘Literally for this…’

  This is the most original, enjoyable, moving and impressive book about the First World War that I have read since the centenary began. It is not a ‘history’ book like Max Hastings’s Catastrophe, say, Peter Hart’s Gallipoli, or David Reynolds’s The Long … Continue reading

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Publishing

After nearly fifty years of contact with publishers, I could bore for England on the subject…which means that I must make sure I don’t! I will try to keep this short and focussed on the task of finding the right … 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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A soft landing and season’s greetings!

After five and a half years living full time with writing this book, I am somewhat dazed by the soft landing of Bibliography, Acknowledgements and the odd tidying up. I am a bit light-headed. It feels unreal, especially compared with … Continue reading

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‘…but Mr Jones does look a nice dog’

After enduring a long bout of illness and the first anniversary of George’s disappearance at Gallipoli, in the summer of 1916 Kittie decided she must channel her energies into a number of useful and therapeutic activities. One of these was … 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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George’s alma maters

I little thought, when I visited the archives of Trinity College, Oxford, on 4 August 2011 to research aspects of George Calderon’s undergraduate years there, that five years later I would still be in invaluable contact with the Archivist, Clare … Continue reading

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‘He became his admirers…’

W.H. Auden’s ‘In Memory of W.B. Yeats’ describes Yeats’s death in January 1939, culminating in: ‘The current of his feeling failed: he became his admirers.’ I often think the word should be ‘readers’ rather than ‘admirers’, for as Auden himself … Continue reading

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‘bubbling with wit and good humour’

In a letter to the TLS  (9 July 2010) I appealed for unpublished letters or works of George Calderon, but also asked readers to contact me if they had ‘come across references to him in obscure publications’. My thinking was that … 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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