Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
George Calderon c.1901
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Captain of the 11
George Calderon, 1912
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Monarch Butterfly MadeiraRecent 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: The Great War
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
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged biographies, biography, Calderon project, Calderonia, Christmas, comments, Dardanelles, finishing, Gallipoli, George Calderon, holly, Kittie Calderon, New Year, Patrick Miles, publishers, season's greetings, sheds, The Great War, World War I, Ypres
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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
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Archie Ripley, Battle of the Somme, biographies, biography, British Expeditionary Force, Clement Quinn, coal mining, comments, Dardanelles, Eric Gill, Gallipoli, George Calderon, India, John Masefield, Jones, Joseph Cribb, Katharine Ripley, King's Own Scottish Borderers, Kittie Calderon, Lucknow, Mr Jones, photographs, Robert Holmes, Sheffield, soldiers' letters, The Great War, The Raj, Third Battle of Krithia, World War I, Ypres, Zeppelins
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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
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Archibald Ripley, Archie Ripley, Arnold Pienne, Arthur Lowry, athletics, biography, Clare Hopkins, commemoration, comments, Dardanelles, Downy V. Green, Eastcote, Frederick Hollyer, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Gryphon Club, Harold Dowdall, Henry Woods, Herbert Blakiston, Hugh Legge, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Michael Furse, Miners Strike 1912, Percy Lubbock, Rugby, Smoking Concert, St Ives College, The Fountain, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Trinity College Oxford, Trinity College War Memorial, World War I
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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
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged alma mater, biographies, biography, Calderonia, Clare Hopkins, comments, George Calderon, Kittie Calderon, L.W.B. Brockliss, One Man and his College, The Great War, Trinity College Oxford, University of Oxford, World War I
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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
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged British Expeditionary Force, commemoration, comments, For the Fallen, George Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Remembrance Day, Rupert Brooke, The Great War, The Soldier, W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, war memorials, World War I
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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
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged biographies, biography, comments, Dardanelles, Fort Brockhurst, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Grenadier Guards, Helen Peel, Heneage, Kittie Calderon, Michael Davidson, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, Robert Peel, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Times Literary Supplement, World War I
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‘The Long Shadow’, War Poetry, and Commemoration
Faithful followers of this blog will recall my account on 16 December 2015 of Professor David Reynolds’s public lecture ‘Making Peace with the Great War: Centenary Reflections’. I have now read the book behind the lecture (see above) and … Continue reading
Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Adrian Gregory, atrocities, Belgium, Brexit, British Expeditionary Force, commemoration, comments, concentration camps, Damian Grant, David Reynolds, EU, Forester's House, General French, General Kitchener, Isaac Rosenberg, La Maison Forestière, Pals battalions, propaganda, Siegfried Sassoon, The Great War, The Holocaust, The Long Shadow, Thiepval, Treaty of Versailles, War Poets, Wilfred Owen, Wilfred Owen Association (France), World War I, Ypres
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A letter to the ‘Manchester Guardian’, 12 May 1919
Sir, — The recent notice in the “Times” of George Calderon’s death in battle on Gallipoli tells his friends that they may hope no longer. To us the loss is inexpressible. That which the theatre has suffered cannot, of course, … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Annie Horniman, comments, Dardanelles, Gaiety Theatre Manchester, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Manchester Guardian, Manchester Repertory Company, military interpreters, obituaries, Percy Lubbock, Royal Horse Guards, The Blues, The Great War, The Times, Third Battle of Krithia, William Caine, World War I, Ypres
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Armistice Day, 1937
The first national two-minute silence was held on Armistice Day 1919. In 1945 it was transferred to the nearest Remembrance Sunday, commemorating the fallen of both world wars. After a campaign mounted by the British Legion, in 1995 the two-minute … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels
Tagged Armistice Day, biographies, biography, British Legion, commemoration, George Calderon, Kennington, Kittie Calderon, Remembrance Sunday, The Great War, two-minute silence, White Raven, World War I
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‘…you may touch them not.’
Over the last two years, I have been asked why I chose Wilfred Owen’s line ‘Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not’ as the epigraph to Calderonia; why I am apparently fond of the poem; whether I … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged agapē, camaraderie, comments, erotic love, Georg Trakl, George Calderon, Greater Love, Hölderlin, intimacy, Ivor Gurney, Jesus Christ, Laurence Binyon, Mary Magdalene, Platonic love, Santanu Das, The Great War, touch, war poetry, War Poets, Wilfred Owen, World War I
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The limits of biography
I do not know why the popularity of autobiographies and biographies has mushroomed in 21st century Britain. I wish someone would tell us. Meeting and communicating with people makes the world go round, of course, so perhaps the fact that … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Artemis Cooper, autobiography, biographies, biography, Boris Johnson, Cazalets, Claire Harman, comments, Constance Sutton, Damian Collins, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Fatal Purity, Frederick the Great, George Calderon, Harvey Pitcher, John Aubrey: My Own Life, Kittie Calderon, Matthew Dennison, Maximilien de Robespierre, Peter Ackroyd, Philip Sassoon, Richard Chartres, Ruth Scurr, The Great War, Thomas Carlyle, Vita Sackville-West, William Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, World War I
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Kittie Hamilton
I have returned from holiday fired up to put the last tittle on my biography by the end of November and get copies to the interested publishers immediately afterwards. This means writing the Afterword (‘Who George Calderon Was’), radically improving the … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged anti-suffragism, Archie Ripley, Arts and Crafts, biographies, biography, Calderon family, comments, Conservative Party, Dardanelles, Eliza Stewart, feminism, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Hove, John Hamilton, Kennington, kenosis, Kittie Calderon, Liberal Party, Mary Simson, Mrs Stewart of Torquay, Nina Astley, Nina Corbet, Petersfield, Pym family, suffragism, Tahiti, The Great War, The Red Cross, Third Battle of Krithia, trade unionism, VAD, William Rothenstein, World War I
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‘Edwardian bastards’ — a personal note
Periodically I have to remind myself that in the 1950s I met plenty of Edwardians, in the sense of people whose character and values were formed in the longer Edwardian period of 1897-1916 and who were thought of as being … Continue reading
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 →