George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
George Calderon, 1912
George Calderon c.1901
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Captain of the 11Recent 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)
Tag Archives: biographies
Watch this Space
6/4/16. I have now revised 96% of my book George Calderon: Edwardian Genius. The last chapter, covering Kittie’s life 1923-1950, feels too close still (I finished the second draft only two months ago) to tackle, so I am limiting myself to … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Addenbrooke's Hospital, Belgium, biographies, biography, British Expeditionary Force, Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, Clare College, commemoration, comments, Dardanelles, David Kindersley, Eric Gill, First Eastern General Hospital, George Calderon, Joseph Cribb, Joseph Griffiths, King's College, Kittie Calderon, Mediterranean Force, Philomena Guillebaud, Territorial Army, The Great War, World War I
Leave a comment
Watch this Space
23/3/16. I have now revised 92% of the typescript of my book. I shall tackle the last two chapters, which cover Kittie’s life 1915-50, after Easter. One reason for leaving them till then is that there are two pieces of … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Adrian Gregory, American Civil War, biographies, biography, commemoration, comments, Dardanelles, Drew Gilpin Faust, Emily Dickinson, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Louis Menand, Oliver Wendell Holmes, sacrifice, Sandham Memorial Chapel, Stanley Spencer, The Great War, war poetry, War Poets, Wilfred Owen, World War I, Ypres
2 Comments
Watch this Space
Calderonia is an experiment in biography through a blog. It tells the story of George and Kittie Calderon’s lives from 30 July 1914 to 30 July 1915 from day to day as it happened, but exactly 100 years afterwards. It therefore … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged 'real time', Anton Chekhov, biographies, biography, Calderonia, comments, Constance Garnett, Dardanelles, deadlines, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Jenny Hands, political parties, Taoism, The Great War, The Stage Society, trade unionism, World War I, Ypres
Leave a comment
Watch this Space
Calderonia is an experiment in biography through a blog. It tells the story of George and Kittie Calderon’s lives from 30 July 1914 to 30 July 1915 from day to day as it happened, but exactly 100 years afterwards. It therefore … Continue reading
Watch this Space
9/12/15. Cambridge Professor of International History David Reynolds’s lecture at the Perse School on 2 December entitled ‘Making Peace with the Great War: Centenary Reflections’, was a virtuoso performance — restrained, relaxed, magisterial, deeply challenging. The audience of about a hundred and … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Battle of Waterloo, biographies, biography, commemoration, comments, Dardanelles, David Reynolds, EU, Gallipoli, George Calderon, German Problem, Hannah Arendt, Kittie Calderon, Road Peace, Siegfried Sassoon, The Great War, Thiepval Memorial, Treaty of Rome, Vera Brittain, Wilfred Owen, World War I
Leave a comment
Watch this Space
23/11/15. I am now reading and digesting every item in Kittie’s archive that relates to the period 1923-50, and it’s immeasurably deepening my understanding of her life in that period, which spans Sheet in Hampshire (1923-34) and Kennington in Kent (1934-48). The … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Agincourt, Battle of Britain, biographies, biography, Clare Hopkins, commemoration, comments, David Reynolds, Fiesole, George Calderon, Kennington, Kittie Calderon, Lerici, Lubbock family, Montreux, Percy Lubbock, Pym family, Sheet, Spanish Armada, Sybil Lubbock, The Great War, World War I
Leave a comment
Watch this Space
16/11/15. I have been reading the copy of The Sayings of Lao Tsŭ (John Murray, 1905) that George Calderon gave his wife Kittie on her birthday, 5 March 1905. I had always known that George was interested in Taoism, but the signs … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Agincourt, Anton Chekhov, Basil Dean, Battle of Britain, Benedict Cumberbatch, biographies, biography, commemoration, comments, David Reynolds, George Calderon, Kittie Calderon, Lao Tsu, Lionel Giles, Liverpool Repertory Company, National Coal Strike, New Theatre Cambridge, New Theatre Oxford, Spanish Armada, Taoism, The Fountain, The Great War, Trinity College Oxford, William Rothenstein, World War I
Leave a comment
Watch this Space
9/11/15. It is a huge relief to have ‘finished writing’ the penultimate chapter, ‘Aftermath and Masterpiece’, of my biography. Although it is only 9000 words long, it has taken me ten weeks to research and write (in pencil). It has been by … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Agincourt, Basil Dean, Battle of Britain, Benedict Cumberbatch, biographies, biography, Clare Hopkins, commemoration, comments, David Reynolds, George Calderon, Kittie Calderon, Liverpool Repertory Company, National Coal Strike, New Theatre Cambridge, New Theatre Oxford, Spanish Armada, The Fountain, The Great War, Trinity College Oxford, White Raven, World War I
Leave a comment
Watch this Space
2/11/15. I have a hunch that the word ‘unconscionable’ features regularly in biographers’ conversations with themselves… It has taken me an ‘unconscionable’ four and a half years to reach the endgame of writing George Calderon’s biography, when I thought it would take … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged biographies, biography, comments, Dardanelles, Edwardian theatre, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Horace, New Zealand, suffragism, Tahiti, The Great War, Virgil, World War I
Leave a comment
Watch this Space
12/10/15. There were dozens of books published by English and American visitors to Tahiti between about 1890 and 1930, and Rupert Brooke’s poems about the island became extremely well known. I have to admit that this literature is so large that I … Continue reading
Watch this Space
16/8/15. If you haven’t seen the latest cracker of a Comment from Clare Hopkins, I recommend that you do (top right)…and contribute to the discussion! I have been away for a week. This necessitated carting the manuscript with me and a … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged biographies, biography, Clare Hopkins, comments, George Calderon, Kittie Calderon, Percy Lubbock, publishers, Tahiti
Leave a comment
30 July 1915: ‘Ends’
It does not seem exactly a year since the small boys Jack and Roly Pym ran across from their holiday home at Seaview on the Isle of Wight to greet George Calderon, a kind of uncle to them, who had … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
Tagged 'real time', Anton Chekhov, Ashford, biographies, biography, Captain Charles Evelyn Pym, Carl Jung, Clare Hopkins, comments, Dardanelles, Derwent May, Elizabeth Ellis, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Harvey Pitcher, Isle of Wight, Jack Pym, James Muckle, John Dewey, John Pym, Johnnie Pym, King's Own Scottish Borderers, Kittie Calderon, Louisa Scherchen, Michael Welch, Nina Astley, Nina Corbet, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, Percy Lubbock, Peter Hart, Roly Pym, Sam Evans, Seaview, Sheet, Tahiti, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Violet Pym, White Raven, World War I, Ypres
8 Comments
REVIEW. Lorna C. Beckett, The Second I Saw You: The True Love Story of Rupert Brooke and Phyllis Gardner (British Library, 2015), 208 pp.
The chance sight of an email that I sent my military research assistant on 22 July 2014 recalls me with a start to the fact that I began researching the last year of George Calderon’s life exactly a year ago! … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure
Tagged August Strindberg, biographies, biography, British Library, comments, Dardanelles, Edward Marsh, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Lorna C. Beckett, Mary Gardner, Phyllis Gardner, Rupert Brooke, sex, The Edwardians, The Great War, The Old Vicarage, World War I
Leave a comment
Flashback — and tourbillions in Time (again)
The Imperial War Museum invited me to contribute a post to their Research Blog, and I promptly accepted. I am not, of course, a military historian, and when I started researching the last ten months of George’s life I was … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged 'real time', biographies, biography, C.F. Aspinall-Oglander, Captain Grogan, Captain Hogan, Captain Paterson, Clare Hopkins, comments, Daniel Joiner, Dardanelles, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Jack Harley, King's Own Scottish Borderers, Kittie Calderon, KOSB, Major G.B. Stoney, Official History, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, Peter Hart, R.M.E. Reeves, Robert Graves, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, World War I
4 Comments
Watch this Space
20/4/16. Several people have asked me about late photographs of Kittie. Here is the last one I know of. It was not easy to date. Triangulating from the probable year of Cairn terrier Bunty’s birth (1922), the dog’s known longevity, … Continue reading →