All Comments

Patrick, congratulations. All things come to those who wait, and I hope you consider that the wait has been worth it. It seems to me that the review is fully sympathetic to the difficulties you encountered in capturing George’s essence, and at the same time shows why his life and achievements merit a full-scale biography. Maybe you have a ‘slow-burner’ on your hands after all.

I completely agree with you, Damian, though I could never match your eloquence… The COO (Chief of Operations) has youth on his side… I think printing with Amazon is nothing less than the biggest upheaval in publishing since authors first received proofs. Forget the book being perfect when it’s published: with Amazon it’s perfectible only AFTER its published! (Though perfectible it certainly is — their infinite flexibility is the hallmark of the New Age.) My ‘browned-off-ness’, therefore, was simply the strain of gritting my teeth to ascend this portentous new learning curve in my eighth decade.

Sam 2! You talk of ‘learning curve;’
Only the young would have the nerve.
Some curve, indeed! The iceberg’s tip;
This is more like a Mobius strip,
Sliding between Libre/Open Off-
ice and a text-based PDF.
‘Tweaking parameters’ of what
Has been, already, quite a lot
Of work, sounds more like what it takes
To tightrope over pits of snakes.
I’d rather scratch clay tiles in Babylon
Than try to set a text for Amazon!

Patrick:

Naum Gabo’s ‘Opus 9’
Would clearly be the choice of mine–
Remember (if you don’t, just look
Back), I have ordered, booked the book;
Although I like the logo ‘Sam
& Sam,’ set squarely on the Cam.
(‘Cambridge Upstart Press’ might be
A licence to use CUP?)
Your idea’s good, but could one beat it?
Could one not have one’s cake, and eat it?
I mean, like Laurence Sterne, insert
The formal cover (from the QWERT
Y keyboard) somewhere in the text,
So no-one knows what’s coming next?
That’s what the Future’s all about–
Apologies. Over and Out.

Damian

Certainly, dear Damian! Take us on a flight of your own inimitable poetic carpet! And many thanks for this Comment, which is as entertaining and stimulating as ever. You ought, however, not to denigrate yourself for not dedicating a lifetime to ‘real research’, especially as your Smollett labours led to published scholarly results. I’ve always felt that as used by Academe ‘research’ suggests some activity like bowls, or embroidery, that is an end in itself. Since I can’t contemplate ‘doing research’ of that unteleological kind, I fear I am not a ‘real researcher’ myself. Even with a big project like George, I wouldn’t say I ‘researched’ it, I just ‘wanted to find out’! (For my own reasons.) And perhaps that ‘9 to 5’ conception of research explains why, unlike you and me, many academics fall victim to EPMOS (Ever-expanding Post-retirement Magnum Opus Syndrome)?

Patrick: Your two recent posts on the intricate, aleatory and occasionally exultant process of research fill me with wonder at the pertinacity of the human mind, and the fact that intellectual curiosity can be so unremitting. As a very undiligent researcher myself (see below), I can only imagine the satisfaction it must give to someone like yourself who has spent years labouring in the vineyard when a connection is suddenly revealed, a mystery solved — as you say, often through an unlikely concatenation of circumstance — and another piece of the giant jigsaw puzzle fits into place. Or when you can begin to see the figure in the carpet; the design that reveals itself out of the million knots and loops of the weave. Felicitations: and (to change the metaphor), keep that magic carpet flying!

I hope you and your readers will forgive a descent into the anecdotal, but I cannot help reflecting, by contrast, on my own minute contribution to ‘real’ research. As a callow postgraduate, newly admitted to the portals of the North Library in the old BM Reading Rooms, I discovered from consulting the first edition of Smollett’s Travels Through France and Italy (1766) that Smollett had here made many MS additions and revisions, which had never been included in any later edition of the work. This provided for my own first (exultant) research publication, in the redoubtable Notes and Queries, in 1967. And on the strength of this, I was invited by OUP to prepare a new edition of the work. But there my own research adventure ends (though I did later edit one of Smollett’s novels for OUP, inspired more by critical than textual motives). It fell to a more serious scholar, Frank Felsenstein, to follow this up. Indeed, he literally followed Smollett’s footsteps on his European journey, researching as he went — as I had neither the motivation nor the means to do — and eventually (in 1979) produced the now standard edition of the Travels, in which my own grain of mustard-seed appears in a footnote.

All of this is so remote now, and I have no regrets as I revisit the circumstances, since I know that I did not have the temperament to work in this way; as Frank did (I got to know him quite well later), and as you and your Russianist friends have. And as genealogists everywhere do, in the intriguing–and as you have found–intersecting exploration of family history.

One consequence of this train of thought is that I now have an idea for a poem on the North Library, and its use/abuse by one such as myself. I am back walking down that muffled corridor from the echoic dome, drawn by that seductive smell of old books in confined spaces…perhaps I may one day add this as a footnote on your blog?

Even had I not written about Rochelle Townsend, I would have found this fascinating. It is, after all, the first translation of Uncle Vanya into English. It also sheds light on Rochelle’s approach to translation. Did she have help with her Anna Karenina and Virgin Soil? Who were the helpers? I hope the full text can be published in due course.

I so enjoyed this post — especially as I am researching Julian Pym’s story. I’m using it as one of two case studies for a chapter on child-authored texts in a forthcoming Cambridge History of Children’s Literature. Unfortunately, I’m unable to see Julian’s original. I live in the US — I’m a professor in the English Department at the University of Connecticut — and cannot get to the British Library at the moment. If John Pym has any other scans or resources he is willing to share, I would be eternally grateful!

Patrick: thank you for this moving passage from Pasternak. I couldn’t read your translation without thinking of Hardy’s poem about how the simple certitudes and natural recurrences underlie and survive gross historical events (he was thinking evidently of the war):

Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.

Yonder a maid and her wight
Came whispering by;
War’s annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die.

I can’t really imagine an ‘imaginary conversation’ between Hardy and Pasternak (don’t know enough about either of them to invent convincingly), but just from this evidence they would have certain simple things in common.

I guess the release of the journalist in Russia yesterday, after the concerted outcry in the media, will not alter much your pessimistic outlook…nor perhaps should it. But at least it shows that the centre is not stone deaf. What about the Chinese reaction to protests in Hong Kong?

Stick to the point, Grant!

It rather sounds like ‘the coming of the Kingdom’!

Yes, he is incredible. Irina Muravyova

I’m sure your tongue-in-cheek friend is right about the James Tait judges’ motives for not shortlisting your book. Such self-censorship has long been endemic in the world of publishing, as witnessed by Orwell’s (ironically still largely unpublished) preface to Animal Farm. Incidentally, how Orwell would have loved that adjective “woke”. It’s straight out of Newspeak, isn’t it?

I aways used Amazon-style cardboard book wraps when sending my books by post. These are available (surprise, surprise!) from Amazon, and purchased in packs of 25 or 50 are not too expensive if you shop around from different dealers (making sure to order the correct size for your book). They are sturdy and, with a computer-printed address label, lend a note of professionalism. Of course, you may have a supply of used Jiffy bags you want to use up. (End of advertising spiel!) On the other hand, I and I’m sure many other booklovers would find the idea of receiving a brown paper parcel lovingly secured with vintage string and sealing wax most appealing, reminiscent of those little specialist dealers such as Thornton’s.

As for cheeky (or stupid) purchasers clicking on the wrong postage, I was always quite ruthless, refunding their payment and asking them to reorder at the correct price.

Thank you very much for this, John: words of wisdom based on experience. No-one knows better than you what the work of marketing a self-published book involves! Yet (I think you would agree) it’s intensely satisfying because one is achieving those sales through one’s personal exertions and entirely for one’s own profit.

You will be interested to hear that the Society of Authors have emailed me to confirm that it is illegal for a publisher to extort PLR payments from an author. They are ‘concerned’ to hear of the practice.

Yes, I think ‘vanity publishing’ is used sniffily by mainstream publishers. What concerns me more, though, is when common readers — even one’s friends! — brand something ‘vanity publishing’ simply because one has published it oneself. It cuts no ice when one points out that Shakespeare, Swift or Proust, say, were self-published… There is a snobbery here, and a desire to ‘score’, that is akin to saying: ‘I haven’t seen your book in Heffers yet!’ I intend to return to this psychological phenomenon, but if you have something to say about it from your own experience, I shall, as ever, be pleased to hear from you.

A surprising number of Calderonia followers have emailed me to say that they were aware of Lafcadio Hearn already and had read a few of his books about Japan. Interestingly, they are all people who have lived for extended periods in other cultures (though not Japan). I am dying to ask them whether, like Hearn with the kimono in Japan and George with the pareu on Tahiti, they wore national dress whilst living in these countries. To some that may seem play-acting, an affectation, or a symptom of instability. But I would say it is a necessary part of acquiring a deeper understanding of a country’s culture. You have to ‘blend’. You have to be more accepted as ‘one of us’ and feel more ‘one of them’. I always laugh when I remember my father-in-law looking at a photograph of me with a Russian friend in Russia amongst the snow and birches etc in 1981, and saying that I, in my worn out Finnish fur coat, tartan scarf and battered Lenin cap, looked more Russian than my friend in his western puffer jacket and ski hat! On the other hand, one has to know when to stop. My father, working behind the counter of a post office, was unnerved when a local resident, who had retired to his home town after a lifetime in Nigeria, would enter in full flamboyant African male attire. Also, I once shared a house in rural England with an anthropologist who was given to weeding the garden in a ceremonial loincloth and headdress given to him by ‘his’ tribe. Are these just cases of, as it were, ‘going native’?

It was a lot of fun coming up with 2018’s image, in this case an animation!

There is a Calderonia tradition of light-hearted Christmas posts, beginning perhaps in 2014:

Cemented in 2016:

Followed by last year 2017’s:

And then 2018’s animated graphic in the post above.

It might be a tad early, but Merry Christmas one and all!

Your comment goes to the heart of the matter. Many many thanks. It illustrates what, with hindsight, I feel was the arc of the commemoration: moving from the big national events, such as the lighting of the lamps on 4 August 2014, the Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red installation, or official ceremonies at the foreign war memorials, to the increasingly local and personal acts of remembrance, the increasingly individual interest in the fallen as human beings, exemplified by Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old and above all Andrew Tatham’s project A Group Photograph. Inevitably the four years were conceived as a top-down memorial, but that has metamorphosed into a bottom-up act of commemoration. The people woke and the people spoke.

It is the local, unpolished commemorations that have been the most moving over the last few weeks. The national events, with the exception of Danny Boyle’s sand sculptures, have seemed to me predictable or over elaborate.

On Saturday I went to a small art exhibition in the Arts Centre at Didcot, a town hardly associated with artistic originality. A local artist, Anna Dillon, had painted a series of landscapes of the Western Front as it is now. The exhibition began with landscapes of her village, including the farm Masefield was living in in 1914, then moved to the battle-fields, took us around the most famous sites, and finally returned to the village. The paintings were strikingly bright and colourful with only the outlines of a crater or a cemetery in a far corner to remind us of what had occurred there a hundred years before. Each painting was dedicated to a local soldier who had died and between the paintings the artist had posted an explanatory text and a representation of Nash’s war-time engraving or painting of the location. The exhibition was poignant, creative and fresh, so different from the carefully curated, worthy but stale homages to the old masters that the National Gallery and Royal Academy continually mount.

I have taken two things therefore from the last few months. One is obviously the depth of feeling – the sincere desire among the adult population in all communities to commemorate the centenary. The other is the staggering burst of national creativity and energy the centenary has released at the local level. Every parish, village and town found its own original way of marking the event through drama, song and visual art. Most of the people organising the events knew next to nothing about modernism, let alone postmodernism, but they found non-commercial, simple, original and even daring ways of commemorating the end of the Great War which put the establishment icons of the British arts to shame. For this reason alone, we can be sure that the country has a future! Out of the darkness has come light.

I’ve always thought of the bugles calling them home but they cannot come. And yes it is unbearably sad in that reading.
I’m afraid it makes me angry when the way the history of war is taught is misrepresented as either ‘watching videos’ (Blackadder) or ‘tragic poetry’ or some other gross simplification. The way in which war is interpreted in each generation is a nuanced and complex business and needs to be multi-dimensional, with many voices.

Exactly two years on from this post, I notice that in next week’s Radio Times (3-9 November 2018) a correspondent, one Beryl Buggy from Tralee, gently takes Peter Jackson to task for misquoting Binyon in the title of his film. (Jane Hill, the Letters Editor, brushes it off.)

A COMMENT-REVIEW

With George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Patrick Miles has written a remarkable work which takes biography into the sphere of critical archaeology. Piece by piece, this book patiently discovers a man, and delivers him to us in all his productivity and complexity. Years of diligent searching and sifting (the Acknowledgements take up nine pages, telling their own story) — motivated by the courageous conviction that here was an exemplary ‘life and works’ to be assembled from very disparate materials — and a deeply considered method of presentation, have resulted in this illuminating biography, which establishes George Calderon at the centre of Edwardian literary (and political) life.

Not the least of its virtues is the recognition and insistence that this Edwardian age, far from treading water between high Victorianism and modernism, was actually swimming vigorously against the Victorian tide, and preparing many of the attitudes and materials that would issue in modernism after the hiatus of the war — a war which cost Calderon his life, at Gallipoli, at the age of 45.

A theme that runs through the book is that of Calderon’s versatility as a writer; a versatility which, Miles insists, is also characteristic of the Edwardian age. George Calderon was a true polymath: accomplished linguist (he even set to work on a new universal language), translator, travel writer, novelist, essayist, and — best of all — dramatist, in the genre which brought together these complementary but centrifugal talents. One is struck by an anonymous critique published after his death (and retrieved with typical thoroughness by Miles from a provincial newspaper), which proposes that George’s plays were ‘not great plays. But they suggest, somehow, that their writer was a great man, whose talents were dissipated by the strength of his critical faculties’. This pertinent observation brings to mind Coleridge, who famously lamented in his ‘Dejection: An Ode’ what he saw as a negative tension in himself between ‘abstruse research’ (of which Calderon did plenty) and his ‘shaping spirit of Imagination’.

Patrick Miles argues at one point , apropos of Calderon’s short plays from 1910-13, that rather than treat them as ‘hybrids’, mixing cultures, ‘we should see them as examples of an expanded form of something that he had done all his life, namely translation’. This of course requires us to understand translation in the broadest and most creative sense; as does the author, describing the one-act play The Little Stone House as ‘a masterly translation not from one national language to another, but of one literary genre to another’. It is as if another universal language is at work here, drawing on energies that underlie all human self-representation: turning like a mobile through time.

This metamorphic quality applied not only to Calderon’s work, but to his life as well — which provides something of a headache for his biographer, struggling as he must to establish some kind of coherence. Calderon could appear a different person to different people; even his close friends felt they could not claim to know him ‘in the round’. Miles quotes Laurence Binyon’s observation: ‘I seemed always to be discovering something new in him.’ And this reflects his wife Kittie’s own opinion: ‘Did one human body ever hold quite so simple and quite so complex a soul?’ Patrick Miles has worked out a method which seems to me to cope admirably with this dilemma; a method which far from simplifying his subject, allows him to appear in all his energy and volatility. This consists in what one might call a ‘layering’ technique, whereby we are introduced to several George Calderons, from different perspectives, in different chapters (and we have to wait until page 95 to be told he ‘was born George Leslie Calderon at 9 Marlborough Place, St John’s Wood, London on the morning of 2 December 1868’; Sterne himself could not have managed it better). The colours are juxtaposed, but do not leak into each other; nowhere does Miles try to reduce Calderon by ‘understanding’ him; he does not pluck out the heart of his mystery, which is left for the reader to ponder. Because there are many mysteries in this life, full as it is of contradictions and sudden departures; not least the last, why Calderon found it incumbent on him to enlist at the age of 45, submit himself to rigorous training (including the indignities of learning to ride a horse), and venture unafraid into the killing fields of Gallipoli.

This monumental, 500-page biography is an act of homage, and a labour of love. Patrick Miles seems as reluctant as was his wife Kittie to accept the finality of George’s death, as is suggested by the last chapter, ‘White Raven’, which follows Kittie’s saddening story through her middle and declining years, from 1915 until her death thirty-five years later in 1950. The author is to be congratulated not only for the belief and perseverance which have brought this work to fruition, but for the further labour required for the expertly managed self-publication of such an impressive and attractive volume.

Hooray!

My own feeling is that there a much greater interest in commemorating the end of the Great War in some parts of the country than others. This may have something to do with the relative stability of local populations over the past century. In Oxfordshire, where only a minority of the inhabitants have a longstanding connection with the county, there is little visible sign that 11 November will be a significant moment.

On the other hand, where there has been little inward migration and most of the families living in a town or county are descendants of the First World War generation, then the wish to mark the end of the conflict is very strong. I have just spent a few days in Herefordshire and Shropshire and have been amazed at how visible the commemoration of the war is in the two counties. Virtually every village has a silhouette of a soldier in the parish churchyard and in many places a special effort has been made to honour the village’s dead. One village has painstakingly decorated the lych-gate with a thick garland of handwoven cloth poppies. The towns have also been active. On each house in Leominster where a dead soldier used to live a plaque has been set up with his name and details of his service record. Shrewsbury has been very imaginative. A group of townspeople are making a recording of the names and number (not rank) of every soldier who died from Shropshire. They are doing this by stopping at random shoppers in the town centre and asking them to read aloud a single name from a card. Each soldier’s name will thus be recorded with an individual and anonymous voice, which will bring them back to life again. My wife and I each recorded a name. It was very moving. I did not get to Oswestry but I understand, not surprisingly, that the commemoration of the end of the war there will be a major event. So this really is a bottom-up moment.

Patrick, your analysis of the national mood – ‘tremulous, fitful, liable to change’ as it may be – is extremely interesting. It makes me ponder on another topic that was barely even a word when you started Calderonia. Brexit! Do you think the ‘confusion’ and ‘loss of direction’ that you identify where commemoration is concerned might at least in part be a by-product of the nation’s general anxiety and uncertainty about our future place in Europe?

A hundred years ago, nobody in Britain knew when the War would end – but everybody knew who the enemy was, and the population was as one in ‘just wanting it to be over’. Today we know exactly when the guns will cease firing (as it were) – but, as a nation, we could hardly be less united in how we feel about France, Belgium, Germany, Turkey… I fear that the ‘proper, uplifting, cathartic, ritually endorsed closure’ that you describe might be impossible in the face of the unfinished European business hanging over us. Any national or international event on 11 November must surely be overshadowed by the looming deadline of 29 March, and coloured by a wearisome Brexit cocktail of frustration, annoyance, embarrassment, regret, disappointment, fear – most of which I would seem to have in common with leavers and remainers alike! I can see that family and ‘local level’ acts of remembrance offer a welcome opportunity to re-unite friends, relatives and communities where relationships have been strained and divided by the referendum vote; but will they be satisfying enough? On the other hand, perhaps a big fat anti-climax is actually the perfect and only appropriate way to end.

Thank you for this beautifully written and illustrated post. The sense of liberty described, and thirst for adventure during this period resonates with me too, remembering my father (although not the bohemian lifestyle, to my knowledge). How tragic that their generation then had to go through World War II. It’s very sad that Eric died in 1942; I love the photo of him in Paris!

I owe the phrase ‘and interest in Russian music’, completing a sentence on page 105 of my biography that begins ‘The early 1890s saw a sharp increase in articles about Russian literature’, entirely to pioneer writer on nineteenth-century Anglo-Russian contacts Harvey Pitcher, who suggested it whilst reading my first typescript of the chapter. Until then, I had regarded the occurrence of Russian music in the U.K. as entirely random and unorganised. A little digging about, e.g. in the publications of Philip Ross Bullock, soon persuaded me that, as with most appearances of foreign cultures in a given culture, the arrival of Russian music in British performance was anything but a matter of chance. The name Rosa Newmarch featured, but it is only this review by John Dewey of Lewis Stevens’s book that has really brought home to me what this transiently Edwardian woman achieved. I am really grateful to John for doing this for me and doubtless many others. An American professor of drama has emailed to say that he read John’s post and promptly ordered the book for his department library.

I mean this in the kindest, most admiring, most respectful sense: Rosa Newmarch was clearly an ‘enthusiast’ or ‘wonk’ for Slav music, but she was serious, dynamic, and got things done. There is something quintessentially Edwardian about both her obsession and her energy. If I may adapt what Pushkin said of translators, cultural wonks like Rosa Newmarch are the ‘post-horses of enlightenment’ (i.e. civilisation).

George owned a copy of her Tchaikovsky: His Life and Works (London, 1900). I can recall no mention of her name in his correspondence, but given the range of his London cultural network, his association with Ballets Russes, and his own love of contemporary Russian composers, one is tempted to say he ‘must’ have known her and approved.

Patrick: you must forgive a losel
For making this ill-timed proposal:
Your book George Calderon should be
Recalled, to have a new CD
Inserted, as the music track
Your early readers sadly lack;
George Calderon at last on show
In full, surround-sound stereo.

But wait. Did not Keats (in the Urn)
Give this debate another turn?
‘Heard sounds are sweet,’ he says, ‘but those
Unheard are sweeter’ (I suppose
Your title points to this, today;
Though you don’t give the game away.)
And so your readers, as they please,
Can summon silent harmonies;
And as when reading Thomas Mann
We do the very best we can
To listen through the words-on-page,
We can (with Kittie) now assuage
The loss, the absence books repair
By reading with the inner ear.

Congratulations to Sam2 on the highest viewing numbers for a single fortnight on Calderonia since April! And thanks to him for his superb posts that not only explain in clear readable English the problems of venturing into computer typesetting, but literally introduce some animation into the stuffy old Edwardian format of a standard Calderonian post…

We know that followers have appreciated these two posts, as they have emailed to say so. I would predict that the posts will continue for a long time to be picked up by surfers and bloggers who are taking their first steps into this territory.

Reading Sam2’s posts brings it all back to me.

The designing, experimentation, lateral thinking, problem solving, checking and deglitching were hard work. I remember saying at the time that we were on a very steep learning curve. At the back of it constantly was the fact that the delivery date of 15 May had been set by Clays on 28 November 2017!

So it would have been a miracle if we had got everything right ‘from a standing start’, as an experienced publisher’s editor has expressed it to me. But I think the only unsolved problem that irks me is that we couldn’t get the ‘finishing line’ of every page spread to be the same height above the bottom of the page. When you are looking at a given spread on screen, it is easy not to spot that variation, and for it never to enter your head that one could have crept in. However, in the published book the variation is as much as 1.3 to 2.45 cm. But you can see something similar in commercially published books and, I think, few readers notice it. Even if we had noticed it earlier, we would not have had time to rectify it: it seemed far more important to harmonise the vertical position of the bottom lines on a spread, which Sam2 admirably did. In doing the latter, incidentally, we did have to move forward or back some already indexed text, and adjust the Index accordingly. It seems, though, that there is only one of the classic indexing errors that I have bemoaned in some published books: the entry for ‘Speaker’s Corner’ should read ‘329’ and not ‘328’. Mind you, post-publication checking of the Index has so far identified fifteen other errors!

All these and other necessary improvements will be made in the paperback edition, with the benefit of Sam&Sam’s accumulated experience from producing the present hardback one. As Chekhov once said: ‘To learn, you have to make mistakes.’

The simple realisation that the whole process has brought me to is that if one wants a perfect book (but does one want anything perfect?), one has eventually to ‘handset’ every page. This sounds preposterous, given that we live in the age of ‘computer typesetting’, but in my mind’s eye I see a black-hatted medieval entrepreneur smiling at me wryly and nodding…

That is absolutely wonderful – thank you. I should so like to visit Ors – maybe one day. Thanks to Richard Webster on the War Poets Association Facebook Group for posting the link to your website.

What an accessible yet technical piece. It’s so good to see the process set out like an instruction manual combined with a conversation. I now know a bit more about what was going on during those afternoons in front of the computer during January and February.

Lots jumped out at me such as the meticulous use of carriage returns, tabs and spaces in the original word document that had to be converted into styles. I also smiled at the comment about the typeset document no longer looking like A-level coursework.

From what I gathered, solving the quirks and complications filled in the afternoons from March to May, so I’m looking forward to the next instalment.

Interesting write-up. How did you decide on OpenOffice?

What a good idea, Graeme! Thank you! We shall not trail our hands in the water, however, because of the monster pike… At the moment, I am tackling Topping’s at Ely, as I have talks lined up for Cambridge, Oxford, St Andrews (and Eastcote?) nearer the actual anniversary, 2 December.

A punt on the Cam rather than a launch?

I had intended to respond to Clare’s comment but was rather slow off the mark, and so the following may in some way overlap with the responses of others (including yours, Patrick). I gave up listening to The Archers years ago when it started to irritate me rather than entertain, so I wasn’t aware that the programme had mentioned the Ringing Remembers campaign; but it’s worth mentioning that bell ringers have been hard at work commemorating the loss of their colleagues throughout the First World War centenary period. As an example, our small village (Wylam, in Northumberland) lost two of its ringers (out of 54 men in all) and a quarter-peal was rung for both of them on the 100th anniversary of their deaths. Our local history group managed to identify, contact and bring together a number of members of their families to hear the peals. Other villages with slightly larger or more experienced bands have rung quarter-peals to commemorate every single villager (not just those who rang). How extraordinary, and how touching, that we as communities should remember 1,400 individuals who happened to be bell ringers in such a fitting manner. And top marks to the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers for co-ordinating the scheme. More details at https://cccbr.org.uk. The Ringing World (https://www.ringingworld.co.uk) has published short biographies of every ringer who was known to have died in the Great War.

And while on the subject of grassroots events – no, John, you are not alone: I had never heard of 14-18 NOW either. I’m sure I would have remembered those capital letters. But I have been aware of and enjoyed some of the events, and that is what is important.

This is as brilliant a clutch of Comments as any I can remember on Calderonia… Thank you all. Moreover, I found myself nodding approvingly as I read them, even when there might seem some variance from my own post. For example, I think John Dewey probably is typical in not having heard of 14-19 NOW by name before, and I do accept his point that many people voted Remain precisely to prevent further wars in Europe — both old and young have told me so.

And Clare’s point about the Archers is spot on. There is something mysterious and moving about sound that you can hear from a distance but can’t see the source of. A correspondent tells me that up and down the country campanologists have been commemorating their fallen by ringing ‘quarters’, sometimes muffled, and there is a campaign https://www.big-ideas.org/project/ringing-remembers/ to recruit 1400 new bell ringers in commemoration of those who never returned in 1918. Even Richard Morrison acknowledges this as ‘evocative and useful’. But I think the ringing of every bell in the land at 11.00 a.m. on 11 November will reach parts of the nation that even the visual image can’t reach on TV.

On John’s last point, I know there was a widespread desire to celebrate the centenary of Waterloo in 1915, because George refers to it in a letter to Kittie on his way to Gallipoli. He and other officers on the R.M.S. Orsova agreed that they would meet on the ship to celebrate Waterloo properly in precisely a year’s time — by which time their own War would be over… Personally I agree with Laurence Brockliss that 11 November must be kept special.

As always a thought-provoking post, Patrick. Here are some of mine. Am I alone in never having heard of 14-18 NOW, or is this further proof of that organisation’s expensive failure to connect with the public mood? In November 1916 the local choir in which my wife and I sing gave a performance of the Mozart Requiem in Blandford to commemorate the centenary of the ending of the Battle of the Somme. Together with readings of names of the fallen from Blandford and its twin towns in France and Germany, it was a moving occasion, well attended, with proceeds going to a military charity. Checking with the programme, I see that it was sponsored entirely by local organisations and individuals. I suspect this is typical of the many grassroots events which have had nothing to do with 14-18 NOW.

I totally agree with your comments on ‘official art’. They are by no means ‘laughably romantic’, but a statement of what should be the obvious. The only arrangement which really works is for a sponsor or patron to provide the cash, with the creative artist enjoying complete artistic freedom. This used to be the case at the BBC, for instance, whereas my impression is that nowadays too often the dead hand of managerial expectations and demands holds sway.

It was no doubt disingenuous of Morrison to drag Brexit into the argument. Second-guessing what motivated people to vote one way or the other in the referendum seems to have become something of a national sport, and it was quite reasonable of you to oppose his speculations with an alternative interpretation. One could of course equally suggest that many remainers were swayed by the argument that the EU has ensured peace in Europe since WW2, which various historians have justifiably seen as an almost inevitable continuation and completion of unfinished business from WW1. But who really knows?

One final point: it’s striking that there were apparently no comparable ceremonies in 1915 to commemorate the centenary of the ending of the Napoleonic Wars, despite the defeat of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna having ushered in a century of, if not universal peace, at least relatively limited warfare in Europe (the big exception being the Crimean War). There were of course obvious reasons for ignoring this momentous anniversary at the time. Former allies and enemies from those days now found their roles reversed. It would also presumably have been considered unacceptable to celebrate a hundred years of (relative) peace in the midst of the bloodiest war the world had ever seen. But above and beyond this I wonder if the celebration of such anniversaries on such a scale is perhaps after all a phenomenon more typical of our own age. And if so, why?

The Morrison comment, I hope, is just another example of the affected detachment and cynicism of the chattering classes down the ages. It may beggar belief, but the Magdalen SCR betting book contains a number of wagers from 1940 and 1941 about the chances of a German invasion and the speed with which Britain would be conquered. And the wagers were laid by people close to government! And when the Second World War was over the college didn’t bother to put up a memorial to its dead or even bring back its First World War memorial cross from safe-keeping in Wheatley. It is no wonder Carol Reed made a film in early 1942, The Young Mr Pitt, on Pitt’s struggles against defeatism in the long war against France in the 1790s and early 1800s.

It is highly unlikely that there will be any significant opposition to the public money spent on 14-18 Now because at the local level there has been tremendous interest in commemorating the Great War and many local communities intend to mark the centenary of the Armistice with a special event. In my own village, Wootton, near Abingdon, we are holding a commemorative party for all ages on the afternoon of 11 November. It will begin with a play about the village’s war dead in the 1914-18 war, based in present and past time, which will set the scene for a brief account of Wootton, Britain and the world’s history over the last hundred years told in song, dance and drama. It will end with Brexit to emphasise as Patrick has said that Britain’s relationship with the continent of Europe has been difficult and unresolved since 1914. For the century before we largely stayed aloof. For the last century we have hovered on the edge undecided whether to commit or withdraw. As early as 1960, it should be remembered, AJP Taylor was daring to argue that we should never have gone to war in 1939 over Poland.

The 11 November remains one of the pivotal dates in the national calendar and has become more rather than less so as the number of veterans, even from the Second World War, is dwindling fast. It is to the nation or all four nations what Trafalgar Days is to the navy. If there is a threat to its importance, it comes not from articles by the intelligentsia but from the decision of the present and recent governments to mark the anniversary of any civilian tragedy with a national two-minutes silence. This is an understandable development given our new-found readiness to express our emotions. And there is always room for family and friends to mark these anniversaries with some act of remembrance. But too many national days of mourning rapidly devalues the currency. And where does it end? Why is there no annual commemoration of the Abervan disaster, for instance? We need to keep 11 November special.

I totally agree that the events organised (and co-opted) by 14-18 NOW have, generally, been both excellent in themselves, and excellent value for money. But perhaps it’s in Richard Morrison’s job description to criticise any effort by any government body to organise anything at all for the benefit or enjoyment of the nation. I am reminded of the media negativity that surrounded the Millennium Dome, back in 2000. The feedback from most ‘ordinary’ people who weren’t put off from buying tickets was that it was brilliant. We thought it was so good we took our children twice. Besides which, the Dome itself, now reincarnated as the O2, has been a huge economic and cultural success – as, presumably, can be said of 14-18 NOW.

But anyhow, the real purpose of this comment is to ask, do any Calderonians listen to The Archers on Radio 4? I have been following with interest the efforts of bell-ringing supremo and pig man extraordinaire Neil Carter to recruit Ambridge villagers to take part in a special peal on Armistice Day. This really is a Thing – see https://www.gov.uk/government/news/nations-bells-to-ring-out-together-to-mark-armistice-centenary. Could there be any more appropriate way to mark the anniversary of the guns falling silent? (I don’t like to say, of the war ending. As a nation we seem to have forgotten that the terms signed on November 11 were but the agreement to a ceasefire that allowed the peace negotiations to begin.) The Ringing Remembers campaign will involve volunteers and entire communities across Britain – everyone will have to listen, whether they want to or not – in a way that chimes (!) perfectly with how ordinary people reacted to the news in 1918. But that’s where the similarity ends of course: Neil Carter and his non-fictional counterparts will also be enjoying themselves… War may not be fun; but commemoration most certainly is. (Discuss.)

OK, I have to read this book!!! Delighted to hear it is now available. Please can I have a copy. Are you going to advertise bank account details so people can pay you online, or would you like a cheque posted? Many congratulations – Jenny

Well done indeed Patrick! Put me down for a copy please.
Charles N (in Holland)

The phrase “don’t spook the thoroughbred” comes from talent manager Barry Katz, via comedian Jay Mohr.

Mohr often brings it up on his podcast (and does it in a hilarious impersonation of Barry, who is his manager).

A quick google found this reddit “ask me anything” where Barry Katz mentions it briefly:

Question:
Have you ever had to perform any menial or absurd task to keep someone you were managing happy?

Barry Katz:
Yes. Many many many many times. But I think the thing to understand if you’re in this business is the fact that talent rules. Talent will always rule. And Jay Mohr has a great, great thing he always said to me that I live for in terms of representation and working with people and that quote is, “Don’t spook the thoroughbred.” My whole goal as a manager/producer is to make the people I work with feel confident about their future while feeling safe at the present moment, and if that means that I have to do something that many people would think was beneath me, I have no problem doing it. Because I wanna feel what it’s like on every set, in every situation, what it’s like to be at every level of the business. Whether it be the level of an intern, or the level of an Executive Producer of a Television show…. and for anybody out there listening, I truly believe in any job you’re in, if you wanna get to the next level, you have to be prepared to do everything, and never have a sense of entitlement, or you will fall like a set of car keys in a fish tank.

Sounds like a very wise decision!

When do we get to place our orders?

Yes indeed, Damian, my grandfather is one of my direct lines to the pre-1914 ‘idyll’… But before Wisdenians assure me that W.G. never bowled at Canterbury, I should perhaps stress that my grandfather was describing to me W.G. emerging from the pub outside the ground after having had a few, being challenged by someone to bowl straight in that condition, and clean bowling the challenger on a hastily improvised wicket.

Patrick: the lyrical impulse cannot be resisted…

Your grandfather saw WG
Grace (bearded) bowl at Canterbury.
Were there flags in the famous tree?
And was there honey still for tea?

(I couldn’t get Cowdrey in there as a rhyme, because he’s an iamb rather than a trochee.)

Damian

Well, Patrick, as England toil against Pakistan in the Test (though at least Kent have the beating of Glamorgan in the one-day game in Canterbury), let us indeed talk cricket. And Colin Cowdrey. Because here – take care! – you are speaking about my boyhood hero, and even a comment on a review on a book about the man (gentleman?), takes me back to the early fifties when I thrived or suffered by his success or failure at the wicket. I can recall now, and shiver slightly, the night when I crept downstairs in a cold house at 3 or 4 am to listen to the commentary from Australia; and the elation (the bishop would call it a visionary experience) when Cowdrey scored his first test century, 102 out of England’s total of 191. I won sixpence on a bet with a schoolfriend on this. It was Cowdrey’s doings for Kent and England that kept me cheerful in those not always very glorious days. The time he scored a century in each innings for Kent against the touring Australians, and Kent were within a whisker of beating them. (I use this as a buttress against the time I sat thunderstruck in the stand at Blackheath, as Kent were bowled out for 72 before lunch by Surrey; Godfrey Evans, if you please, scoring 50. At least Dave Halfyard scattered Peter May’s stumps later in the day, as a partial consolation). In those days I used to cycle – later, motorcycle – to all the Kent grounds: Dartford, Maidstone, Tunbridge Wells, Canterbury. I could truly say, with Wordsworth, ‘for me/It was a time of rapture.’ When I was in France in the summer of 54, I cycled every day into Blois to buy a newspaper just for the cricket scores; my host family realized that English eccentricity set in early. And so you see, the bishop is not too far off with his spiritual assessment of the game; cricket did and presumably still does this to people…though I must say the modern game has gone a bit dead on me, personally, and I hardly remember the rules.

Not much about biography here, I’m afraid; but just as there is a tide in the affairs of man that leads on to fortune, there is a time also when we are so susceptible to the stature and capacities of someone, that unconditional ‘worship’ becomes the right term, and any attempt at objectivity is completely pointless.

Must get back to the test match, and check if Kent have pulled it off…

Thanks to Sam2 for instructions on how to access the Susie Boyt article, which is indeed very illuminating on the obsessions and neuroses of biographers, in particular the way in which the life of a creative artist can throw up a split in the biographer’s reaction to the (usually admired) work and the (often annoying or even downright unpleasant) person who produced it. Lucky A.N. Wilson, who’s quoted as saying he loved both Betjeman and his poetry and was in ‘floods of tears’ when he came to write about his death! Although he doesn’t say, it’s clear he found Tolstoy a much more difficult subject in this respect. I have to say that in in the end Wilson did actually do the right thing in managing to remain objective and largely avoiding personal animus in his account of Tolstoy the man. It’s of course a perennial problem. As Auden puts it: ‘what God-fearing Magistrate/ would dream of shaking hands with a financial/ crook and Anti-Semite? Yet Richard Wagner/ wrote masterpieces.’

What a beautiful page. And a terrific cartoon. And a tantalising glimpse inside a long-awaited book. One cannot but hope that – after they have recovered from their present endeavours – Sams 1&2 may go on to publish other works to this meticulous and exquisite standard. I foresee many future approaches from authors…

These verses are intended as a consolation to Sam & Sam, in the context of their latest (and last?) tribulations.

Widows and orphans used to be
A simple matter; you could see
Them right (some of them, if not all)
Founding a Foundling Hospital,
A Magdalen, Ladies’ retreat,
To save such women from the street.
(In Venice, it’s the Ospidale;
When kids leave, ‘Ave atque vale’).
But now our Sam & Sam have found
Orphans and widows can abound
Just where you least expect them; cut
Off from their kind, and in a rut.
You can’t just shunt them here or there;
You risk Deficiency of Care.
The thing to do is let them go
To some strays’ paradise, limbo
Where unclaimed lines can find a space
Unknown to print (that fall from grace).
The readers of George Calderon
Might just catch them: going…gone.

Looks great, Patrick. I agree with others; it’s a lovely picture of George. Looking forward to seeing “the real thing” in due course.

It’s a stunning cover. I was struck by the movement on the front cover – George emerging from darkness, perhaps only momentarily caught in the slanting light, heading off-screen to go who knows where…
After the front, the back seemed to have a feeling of brooding calm: disquiet arising perhaps from hindsight of impending war.
Looking forward to owning this book!