Tag Archives: Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry

‘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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First biography of Gallipoli war hero

Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not. Wilfred Owen Although at 45 well over-age, George Calderon was determined in 1914 to get to the Front. He signed up on 4 August 1914 and went with the Blues … Continue reading

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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In a letter to the TLS  (9 July 2010) I appealed for unpublished letters or works of George Calderon, but also asked readers to contact me if they had ‘come across references to him in obscure publications’.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

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Watch this Space

27/4/16. By the time you read this, I shall either be poring over George Calderon’s uncatalogued manuscript (typescript?) of The Brave Little Tailor and Kittie’s letters to Laurence Binyon at the British Library, or I shall have done so, in which … Continue reading

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Watch this Space

6/8/15. I was flabbergasted last week when the TLS featured ‘Calderonia’ a second time on its very popular blog, this time to mark our closing (see link on right under ‘Related’ to ‘Second TLS blog post’). I cannot thank Michael Caines … Continue reading

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30 July 1915: ‘Ends’

It does not seem exactly a year since the small boys Jack and Roly Pym ran across from their holiday home at Seaview on the Isle of Wight to greet George Calderon, a kind of uncle to them, who had … Continue reading

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29 July 1915

29th July, 1915. The Military Secretary presents his compliments to Mrs Calderon, and begs to thank her for her letter of July 26th, and to inform her that a form of enquiry on behalf of her husband will be sent … Continue reading

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Flashback — and tourbillions in Time (again)

The Imperial War Museum invited me to contribute a post to their Research Blog, and I promptly accepted. I am not, of course, a military historian, and when I started researching the last ten months of George’s life I was … Continue reading

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The Press tries to help

Now that George was officially ‘missing’, Kittie could draw on George’s and her contacts in the world of print to publicise the fact and appeal nationwide for any information about him. She was extremely energetic about this. She first wrote … Continue reading

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15 July 1915

Today Kittie received another letter from Gertrude Bell, who was managing the Enquiry Department for Wounded and Missing at 20 Arlington Street, London S.W. on behalf of the British Red Cross and Order of St John: Dear Mrs Calderon, Sir … Continue reading

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16 June 1915

Unless you are from a military background, you might not realise that soldiers on active service strive to report back to Battalion HQ at home, or how much other regiments exchange information from the battlefield with each other at home, … 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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31 May 1915

Today the fate of George Calderon and several thousand other British soldiers at Gallipoli was sealed. Sir Ian Hamilton, Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, decided to fight a general action on the Helles front without waiting for the extra … Continue reading

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‘New Western Polovtsians’

                                                                                … Continue reading

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26 May 1915

This afternoon the ferry steamer from Mudros with George Calderon on board arrived at Helles and its draft of soldiers from Britain landed ‘under the crumbled ruins of a white castle’ as he put it, i.e. the old fort at … Continue reading

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25 May 1915

In a blue harbour surrounded by green rock-broken hills in a place I may not name. 9 a.m.                                             … Continue reading

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