Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
George Calderon c.1901
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Captain of the 11
George Calderon, 1912
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016Recent 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: short stories
Short story: ‘Crox’
Posted in Personal commentary
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Tagged adolescence, Crocs, Crox, fashion, half-term, love, mothers, rules, schooldays, sex, shoe shops, shop girls, short stories, smoking, taste, teenagers
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2 Comments
From the diary of a writer-publisher: 26
7 November 2023 Ukraine must win. There is no alternative, because Putin will never offer a true peace, only a breather before making another attempt to destroy Ukraine as a sovereign state then torture, murder, deport and imprison its people. … Continue reading →
Posted in Edwardian character, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
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Tagged Alexander Lukashenka, Anton Chekhov, Berkers, Brest, Cambridge Young Chekhov Company, comments, Crocs, Crox, dedicatees, Donald Trump, Edinburgh, Fathers and Children, Garry Kasparov, gene pools, George Calderon, glasnost', Gothic, Ivan Turgenev, Jane Austen, Jonathan Routh, Kaliningrad, Matt Dimmick, NATO, Nicolson Square, old age, Olga Knipper-Chekhova, pavements, perestroika, Remembrance Sunday, Rob Roy, rubber bands, Russia, Scotland, Scott Monument, Scottish Rationalism, shop girls, short stories, Stephan Roman, Taiwan, The Great War, Ukraine, USA, Ventnor, Vladimir Putin, Volodymr Zelensky, Walter Scott, Wilfred Owen, World War I, Xi Jinping
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Very Old Cambridge Tales 4: ‘First Love’
Morning placed his misty paws on the window sill and peered in through the latticed casement. Stephen May (2 yr Maths) was asleep with his mouth slightly open like a baby. He groaned, awoke, and looked at the ceiling. Then, … Continue reading →
Posted in Uncategorized
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Tagged bedders, Cambridge, college life, First Love, girls, love, mathematics, May Balls, pornographic films, porters, sex, short stories, suicides, university life, Very Early Cambridge Tales, wardrobes, workmen
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3 Comments
From the diary of a writer-publisher: 25
27 September 2023 There can be no surer sign of age than picking up litter on the way to buy the daily newspaper… I have done this for the last four mornings, including a banana skin. 2 October I have … Continue reading →
Posted in Personal commentary
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Tagged Adolf Hitler, Alexander Pushkin, Angela Merkel, Anton Chekhov, bananas, BASEES Conference, biographies, C.F. Clay, Cambridge University Press, chrestomathies, Clays of Bungay, Death of a Poet, English literature, Finland, First Love, George Calderon, Greater Russia, John Clay, Kittie Calderon, literary criticism, litter, Mikhail Lermontov, New York Times, newspapers, Percy Lubbock, poetry, prosody, readers, Richard Clay II, Russian Empire, Sauli Niinisto, short stories, To the Slanderers of Russia, Very Early Cambridge Tales, Vladimir Putin
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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 24
29 July 2023 As followers may recall, I always believed that the Russian Army was less than enthusiastic about Putin’s war — which is one reason he and Shoigu had to use private armies — and that eventually military opposition … Continue reading →
Posted in Personal commentary
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Tagged 'My First Communist', Alexander Pushkin, archives, As You Like It, British North Borneo, butterflies, Charles Fernyhough, Crox, Damian Grant, ephemerality, Evgenii Prigozhin, evolution, haiku, John Pym, Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, letters, Malaysia, memory, palace revolutions, Parthenos sylvia lilacinus, publishers, Raffles Museum, RSC, Russia, Russian Army, Sabah, Sergei Shoigu, shaiku, short stories, silent majority, Singapore, sonnets, sub-species, The Clipper, the past, treason, Ukraine, Valerii Gerasimov, Vladimir Putin, war, William Shakespeare
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Writing’s weird workings…
My fortuitous review of Keith Dewhurst’s excellent novellas, combined with John Pym’s spontaneous submission of his post about Henry James’s story ‘The Death of the Lion’, has suddenly concentrated my mind on my current project and alerted me to things … Continue reading →
Guest post by John Pym: Henry James’s ‘The Death of the Lion’
An unnamed young Englishman, a lowly journalist with literary ambition, begins to tell a story (cast in the form of ‘meagre’ private notes): the author Neil Paraday is recuperating at home in the country from a grave illness; he’s published … Continue reading →
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
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Tagged 'Terminations', 'The Altar of the Dead', 'The Death of the Lion', comments, commissioning editors, Frank Harris, gender, George Calderon, gossip columnists, Henry James, I. Zangwill, John Pym, journalism, Kittie Calderon, Leon Edel, literary hostesses, literary life, literary salons, literature, magazines, manuscripts, Neil Paraday, Peety, Phil May, pseudonyms, Scribner's Magazine, short stories, The Tatler, The Yellow Book, William Heinemann
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2 Comments
From the diary of a writer-publisher: 21
7 January Almost themed, one could say, in Calderonia, Cambridge academic Ruth Scurr has written a meaty review in today’s Spectator of Claire Harman’s experiment in biography All Sorts of Lives: Katherine Mansfield and the Art of Risking Everything. Anyone who writes … Continue reading →
Posted in Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
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Tagged Alexander Vampilov, Anton Chekhov, armaments, baseline studies, biodiversity, biographies, biography, birds, Bottengoms Fram, butterflies, Calderonia, Cambridge, Cambridge City Council, Cambridge Theatre Company, Church of England, Church Times, Claire Harman, claustrophobia, Clays of Bungay, comments, conservation, cyber warfare, death, ecosystems, entrapment, Erich Ludendorff, Francis Kilvert, funerals, General Douglas Haig, General Foch, ghosts, hackers, Henry Vaughan, Ice Cold in Alex, James Miles, John Constable, Katherine Mansfield, last, Last Summer in Chulimsk, Next to Nature, paranoia, Peter Hall, Ronald Blythe, Russia, Ruth Scurr, Sam&Sam, security certificates, servers, short stories, Siberia, Spring Offensive 1918, Suffolk, Sylvia Syms, T.S. Eliot, The Great War, The Spectator, The Times, The Web, Tree Belt, Ukraine, Victim, wildlife, wildlife corridors, wildlife havens, World War I
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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 →
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
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Tagged A Room with a View, Acton Reynald, affluence, Ann Veronica, Anton Chekhov, Battle of the Somme, Cambridge Daily News, Coal Strike 1912, comments, conscience, Daisy Miller, Dardanelles, dialogue, E.M. Forster, ethics, F.R. Leavis, Gallipoli, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, H.G. Wells, Henry James, human body, Joseph Conrad, journalism, Kittie Calderon, Lady Corbet, Lady with a Little Dog, Laurence Brockliss, loquaciousness, mobility, morality, Mudie's Library, Nina Corbet, novels, psychology, renunciation, sex life, short stories, Tahiti, The Ambassadors, The Edwardian Era, The Edwardians, The Great War, The Lady with the Little Dog, The Wings of the Dove, travel, What Maisie Knew, World War I
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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 17
24 January 2022 I have received several emails commiserating with me over my ‘anxiety’ and ‘nightmares’ about marking examination papers. The writers clearly assume I am Dr Robinson in my story Ghoune — that the story is strictly autobiographical and … Continue reading →
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
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Tagged 'Ghoune', 'Sleep and Death', A.J.A. Symons, Alexander I, Amazon, Andrew Tatham, angina, Anton Chekhov, Anton Chekhov: A Short Life, archivists, Baron Corvo, BASEES, BASEES Conference, biographies, biography, birds, butterflies, Cambridge Tales, Carole Angier, Cheshire Cat, Chris Packham, Clays of Bungay, comments, conservation, death, democracy, examinations, Frederick Rolfe, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, George Sandison, heart attacks, Kittie Calderon, NATO, Niccolo Machiavelli, page margins, printers, RSPB, Sam&Sam, short stories, Speak, Speckled Wood, Taganrog, The Edwardians, The Holocaust, The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment iin Biography, trimming, typesetting, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, W.G. Sebald, W.H. Hudson, Winterwatch
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Hayashi Fumiko’s nuclear winter
Japan’s genocidal war crimes do not go away. They constantly feature in our media and I for one will never forget them, as my uncle died in Japanese captivity in 1945. A recent article in The Spectator was headed ‘Not … Continue reading →
Posted in Personal commentary, Uncategorized
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Tagged aerial bombing, atomic bomb, body language, bombing raids, cultural traditions, Days & Nights, emotions, Emperor Hirohito, feminism, foreign cultures, ghosts, Hayashi Fumiko, J.D. Wisgo, Japan, Japanese literature, poverty, reading groups, sex, short stories, strangeness, suicide, Tokyo, United States of America, women's writing, working class, World War 2
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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 30
15 August 2024 I have seriously to consider binning Twitter (‘X’). I recently started receiving Tweets from Elon Musk, which I either skimmed or did not read at all. This was a mistake, because the bots decided that my ‘tolerance’ … Continue reading →