Tag Archives: The Great War

‘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

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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

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Some Calderonian footnotes to ‘Women in Love’

George Calderon was public-school, Oxford, backed by his wife’s unearned income, rather patriotic, perceived as conservative; D.H. Lawrence was a miner’s son, self-supporting and often penurious, rather oikophobic, perceived as revolutionary. What could they possibly have had in common? They … Continue reading

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Guest post by Damian Grant: ‘Women in Love’ — the novel as prophetic book

Lawrence always reminded the novel of its promise to offer something new. In his essays, where he insists that the novel ‘has got to present us with new, really new feelings, a whole line of new emotion, which will get … Continue reading

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‘Hurtler’ Brangwen, woman in love

Let me explain what lies behind the next three instalments of Calderonia, which are distinguished guest posts taking us up to 8 March and beyond. As part of our lockdown season of old films, Alison and I watched a DVD … Continue reading

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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 13

18 December It feels like a new record: a week has passed since our, in their own words, ‘very striking’ advertisement of George Calderon: Edwardian Genius appeared in the TLS, and it hasn’t brought us a single sale! The line between self-justification … Continue reading

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Guest Post: Andrew Tatham, ‘The Pursuit of Uniqueness and Originality in Self-Publishing’

I have just been asked for advice about self-publishing from someone who has come into the possession of a First World War soldier’s original memoir. It’s hundreds of pages long and includes many photographs and colour drawings. Obviously such a … Continue reading

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John Baines: exemplar of a young officer

‘Exemplar’, not ‘exemplary’, because John Stanhope Baines, son of the Herbert Stanhope Baines who features in Laurence Brockliss’s recent guest post, would not have wanted anyone to regard him as an exemplary young officer of World War I. When he … Continue reading

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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

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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

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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 11

1 August It is now seven weeks since I submitted to The Spectator my 1500-word piece Save it for the (American) nation! How British archives fail us, so I fear they have missed an historic opportunity… It’s been delightful corresponding … Continue reading

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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

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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

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‘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

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‘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

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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 10

7 April Walking home the three quarters of a mile or so from the centre of Cambridge, I saw six people and no cars. As in Georgio de Chirico’s surreal paintings, people are now weirdly visible even from a distance … Continue reading

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