Tag Archives: Belgium

A writer-publisher’s Ukrainian diary: 1

16 March 2022 Tony Blair has said that to keep telling Putin all the things we won’t do in the face of Putin’s carnage (e.g. enforce a no-fly zone, give Ukraine Polish MiGs, co-occupy and safeguard Western Ukraine with the … 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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Guest post: Andrew Tatham, ‘A Group Photograph and the Pursuit of Personal History’

If there’s anything to be learned from biography it is that chance meetings can change lives. I first met Patrick Miles next to the warmth of the Aga in my cousin’s kitchen in 2006. I had met many of my … 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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The War

Every day brings another press extract in The Times’s ‘The First World War’ series, every week another email in their history of the war, and the stream of Tweets from the Imperial War Museum, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, historical institutions, the … Continue reading

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‘Literally for this…’

  This is the most original, enjoyable, moving and impressive book about the First World War that I have read since the centenary began. It is not a ‘history’ book like Max Hastings’s Catastrophe, say, Peter Hart’s Gallipoli, or David Reynolds’s The Long … Continue reading

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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

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Claire Harman: An exemplary modern biography

  In September 1910 George Calderon visited the World’s Fair in Brussels with Walter Crum, the Coptic scholar. He wrote to Kittie from there: ‘I just met an old gentleman in the street who knew the headmistress in Villette and the … Continue reading

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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

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Watch this Space

6/4/16. I have now revised 96% of my book George Calderon: Edwardian Genius. The last chapter, covering Kittie’s life 1923-1950, feels too close still (I finished the second draft only two months ago) to tackle, so I am limiting myself to … Continue reading

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Watch this Space

Calderonia is an experiment in biography through a blog. It tells the story of George and Kittie Calderon’s lives from 30 July 1914 to 30 July 1915 from day to day as it happened, but exactly 100 years afterwards. It therefore … Continue reading

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11 June 1915

Sometime today, which was a Friday, Kittie received the following telegram: O.H.M.S. I certify that this telegram is sent on the service of the WAR OFFICE [Signature] 2nd Lieut. Calderon Oxford Light Infantry attached K.O.S. Borderers was wounded June 4th. … Continue reading

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13 May 1915

If Kittie was still at Devonport, when she opened her curtains in the hotel this morning she would have seen that the Orsova had vanished. At midnight last night, in George’s words of three days later, the huge ship ‘suddenly went … Continue reading

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Kittie’s story

As I have said before, none of George and Kittie’s letters to each other written whilst he was at Fort Brockhurst has survived (there is an envelope addressed to her by George and postmarked Gosport 3 May, but no letter … Continue reading

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21 April 1915

Fortis est veritas 9th Batt. Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry Wednesday My dear Mother,           Haven’t I been writing regularly? Well, you know there’s plenty to do here, and once I’ve got off a sheet to … Continue reading

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They all fall down

Suddenly, in early February 1915, the inmates of Fort Brockhurst were struck by influenza. Kittie says the ‘whole regiment’ went down, but presumably this is figurative. Certainly hundreds were affected, so perhaps the whole 9th (Service) Battalion was garrisoned in … Continue reading

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