Tag Archives: World War I

How would I write it now?

Many authors never re-read their own books. One can understand why. Some must feel that it’s not necessary as it can’t change anything (unless the book is about to have an ‘improved’ edition). Others, like George Orwell apparently, simply don’t … Continue reading

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The Edwardian Re-turn

I hope you will forgive my pun on the title of one of the seminal works about the Edwaaaardian (as they pronounced it) era, Samuel Hynes’s The Edwardian Turn of Mind. A hundred and seven years ago today, at just after … Continue reading

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A writer-publisher’s Ukrainian diary: 4

23 April 2022 It is St George’s Day, hypothetically William Shakespeare’s birthday, and we are in Stratford-upon-Avon witnessing the civic celebrations, which are beautifully done,  inclusive, happy, humorous, almost a Spring flower festival, and a really moving tribute to Shakespeare’s … Continue reading

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A writer-publisher’s Ukrainian diary: 2

5 April 2022 When I contemplated the image from Kyiv that I posted last week, as well as Bruegel I thought of Isaac Babel’s stories Red Cavalry about the Russo-Polish War of 1919-21. Some of that war took place in … Continue reading

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A writer-publisher’s Ukrainian diary: 1

16 March 2022 Tony Blair has said that to keep telling Putin all the things we won’t do in the face of Putin’s carnage (e.g. enforce a no-fly zone, give Ukraine Polish MiGs, co-occupy and safeguard Western Ukraine with the … Continue reading

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Bruegel, reality and truth

We all, I imagine, have photographs of terrible events (World War 1, say, the Holocaust, or Hiroshima) indelibly seared on our brains. Where Ukraine 2022 is concerned, the above is the one I shall never forget. The face is straight … Continue reading

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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 … Continue reading

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‘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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