Tag Archives: Gallipoli

Ukrainian journal

27 June 2024 A Russian opposition group called the Congress of People’s Deputies, consisting of over sixty exiled politicians who were once MPs in the State Duma, has met this week in Warsaw to discuss their plan to overthrow the … Continue reading

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A stunning discovery

Mr Garry Humphreys is writing a major book about the English composer Arthur Somervell (1863-1937), as well as compiling a catalogue raisonné of Somervell’s compositions. On 6 September last year he emailed me to ask whether I thought a typescript … Continue reading

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Short story: ‘My First Communist’

                                                                                … Continue reading

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Was there an ‘Edwardian Age’, and was it ‘great’?

When I began to read George and Kittie Calderon’s archive for my biography of them both, I little thought I would be drawn deeper and deeper into the question of ‘Edwardianism’. Yet I instantly felt as I read George’s letters … Continue reading

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Henry James: Edwardian writer par excellence?

No series of posts about the ‘Edwardian Era’ would be complete without a reference to Henry James, often regarded as its greatest novelist. I have always admired his short stories. I have read ‘Daisy Miller’ every few years since 1974 … Continue reading

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George Calderon’s New Drama

Naturally, my foray into short videos had to end with one about George. I suddenly thought that although the contribution of his own plays to Edwardian ‘New Drama’ is now largely forgotten, one could claim that Chekhov’s plays, which he … 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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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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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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The War again

As readers of George Calderon: Edwardian Genius will know (go on, try it!), George and Kittie were very close to the Pym family, whose home was Foxwold at Brasted Chart in Kent. Violet Pym was Kittie’s niece by her first marriage and, … Continue reading

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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 3

14 May I gather, from a reliable source, that access to Calderonia has been blocked in Russia (I nearly said ‘the Soviet Union’). This would explain why no Russian viewers have featured in the stats for months. One can only … Continue reading

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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 2

18 April The shortlist for this year’s James Tait Black Memorial Prize (biography) has been announced. Strong contenders are hip-hop artist Akala’s debut Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire and Susannah Walker’s The Life of Stuff: A … Continue reading

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