Tag Archives: World War I

Far End: a new Calderonian world

The greatest pleasure to have come out of the hair-tearing ordeal of obtaining permission to publish quotations from scores of letters to George and Kittie written a hundred years ago (see 17 April 2017) has been to correspond with Mrs … Continue reading

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Own a commemorative masterpiece

I first wrote about the above book on 10 February 2016 . I suggest going now to http://www.groupphoto.co.uk/the-book for Andrew Tatham’s own description of it and how it came about. As you will see, it has been praised to the skies by communicators … Continue reading

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The ‘politics’ of publication

I bought the above postcard on impulse in about 1975, thinking: ‘That’s hilarious! It would be difficult to take serious offence at receiving it, yet the message is unmistakable! I’m bound to need one of those some day…’ And I … Continue reading

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Alan Coren touches root

Giles and Victoria Coren have done a magnificent job in selecting and presenting these 420 pages of their late father’s writings 1960-2007, very many of which are masterpieces. I hope they will not mind me invoking paragraph 8.7, sub-section a(ii), … Continue reading

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Brexit: a modest theory

The Times digest of events in the Great War and Mike Schuster’s Great War Project continue to come down the wires once a week, together with scores of daily Tweets from the Imperial War Museum, from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, from … Continue reading

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Dulc(e) et decor(um) est…

I have always been uncomfortable with what I take to be the popular interpretation of Wilfred Owen’s poem Dulce et Decorum est. My first experience of it was in about 1962 from the lips of our young English teacher, a … Continue reading

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Russia (continued)

Chapter four of my biography, ‘Who Had He Been?’, relates amongst other things what George did in Russia between 12 October 1895 and the summer of 1897. I think it will be a revelation to a lot of people. It … Continue reading

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Is a dog literally…forever?

An alternative title to this post would be: ‘Why are there no cats’ cemeteries?’ Three weekends running we have visited local stately homes that were inhabited in the Edwardian period, and each of them had a Pets Cemetery in its … Continue reading

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Enough (43) is enough!

Researching publishers and editors in depth, honing letters and email proposals to them, assembling different forms of synopsis and samples, dealing with the comeback (or lack of), and negotiating with publishers over the past nine months, has been hard work. … Continue reading

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Edwardian love, sex and the ‘T’other’

The Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook 2017 is undoubtedly right to intone the mantra ‘edit, review, revise and then edit again’, but when you have read your 420-page typescript as many times as I have in the last six months, and made over … Continue reading

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A not-paradox, a not-paradox, a most ingenuous not-paradox

In my post of 8 October 2016 I discussed George Calderon’s love of paradox and suggested that the ‘self-referential’ paradoxes in his plays might have been influenced by his following ‘developments in set theory in the 1900s, as he was an … Continue reading

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Whoosh and bang!

A correspondent reminds me that on 7 July I wrote: Since the last approach I made to any of the 31 publishers on my A list was 1 June, I am inclined to think I should wait until at least … Continue reading

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It makes you think

An anniversary has just passed: three years ago on 30 July I posted my first entry on Calderonia. I have just asked my blogmaster to analyse the rather confusing statistics generated daily by WordPress, in order to compile a list … Continue reading

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28 July 1917: A letter to Mrs Calderon

July 28th 1917                                    Havelock Barracks,  Lucknow, India … we are having some terrible weather out hear, its never stop raining for five days, … Continue reading

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Decisions decisions

The most gratifying thing about the whole process of finding the right publisher for my biography of George, which has been going on since January, has been the enthusiasm so many publishers have shown for George himself and his story. … Continue reading

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Plum pie in the sky

I was intending to post about this subject in February, but my attention wandered and the relevant newspaper cuttings got buried. I am very glad that I put it off, as I have now read this recently reprinted book, which … Continue reading

Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments