Subscribe to Calderonia
Calderonia: Start Here
Search Calderonia
Categories
- Edwardian character (215)
- Edwardian English (99)
- Edwardian literature (149)
- Edwardian marriage (162)
- Heroism and Adventure (130)
- Modern parallels (154)
- Personal commentary (441)
- Uncategorized (88)
Recent Comments
- Jim D G Miles on From the diary of a writer-publisher: 28 Excellent entry, Dad. I like the escape room picture, of course, but the story about the Russian and the hole-in-the-wall is exceptional! (28/03/2024 at 9:58 PM)
- Patrick Miles on Short story: ‘Crox’ Thank you, dear anonymous Theo...it is so refreshing to hear the reaction of a Man of the People! Keep a good grip on those cords! 'Part II'?! The rest is secreted in lines (18/12/2023 at 10:33 PM)
- Theo on Short story: ‘Crox’ Delicious! "Are you being Served?" meets "Keeping up Appearances" via Calderotica. But Patrick, you cannot leave us dangling like that just before Christmas! One thing - c (18/12/2023 at 1:35 PM)
- Patrick Miles on Cambridge Tales 8: ‘Black Tie’ Thank you, Damian, for sharing your problem with us. It's difficult to know what to prescribe. Perhaps try examining the facts of the story (e.g. there are not 6 medics in the (20/11/2023 at 9:44 AM)
- Damian Grant on Cambridge Tales 8: ‘Black Tie’ Patrick: I read your story 'Black Tie' on Monday, and knew immediately that it didn't work for me. There was something forced, factitious; something that didn't let the elemen (17/11/2023 at 2:26 PM)
Featured Comments
- James Muckle on George Calderon: a tribute:
By golly, I do enjoy contentious essays like this.…
- John Pym on A terrific find:
Patrick Miles alludes to Percy Lubbock’s 'Earlham' (Jonathan Cape,…
- Katy George on Selected Publications of George Calderon:
Hi, I recently purchased some items from a charity…
- Clare Hopkins on Complex, yes:
Oh Patrick! I can see that being George's biographer/blogger…
- James Muckle on George Calderon: a tribute:
Tags
- 'real time'
- Anton Chekhov
- Archie Ripley
- Belgium
- biographies
- biography
- British Expeditionary Force
- Clara Calderon
- Clare Hopkins
- commemoration
- comments
- Dardanelles
- Fort Brockhurst
- Foxwold
- Gallipoli
- General Kitchener
- George Calderon
- George Calderon: Edwardian Genius
- Harvey Pitcher
- Ian Hamilton
- John Polkinghorne
- John Pym
- King's Own Scottish Borderers
- Kittie Calderon
- Laurence Binyon
- military interpreters
- Nina Astley
- Nina Corbet
- Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry
- Percy Lubbock
- publishers
- Royal Horse Guards
- Russia
- Sam&Sam
- Tahiti
- The Blues
- The Great War
- Third Battle of Krithia
- Trinity College Oxford
- Ukraine
- Violet Pym
- Vladimir Putin
- William Rothenstein
- World War I
- Ypres
Archives
- April 2024 (1)
- March 2024 (2)
- February 2024 (2)
- January 2024 (2)
- December 2023 (2)
- November 2023 (1)
- October 2023 (3)
- September 2023 (1)
- August 2023 (2)
- July 2023 (3)
- June 2023 (3)
- May 2023 (2)
- April 2023 (1)
- March 2023 (4)
- February 2023 (1)
- January 2023 (3)
- December 2022 (2)
- November 2022 (2)
- October 2022 (2)
- September 2022 (3)
- August 2022 (3)
- July 2022 (3)
- June 2022 (4)
- May 2022 (5)
- April 2022 (6)
- March 2022 (3)
- February 2022 (2)
- January 2022 (4)
- December 2021 (2)
- November 2021 (2)
- October 2021 (2)
- September 2021 (2)
- August 2021 (2)
- July 2021 (2)
- June 2021 (2)
- May 2021 (3)
- April 2021 (2)
- March 2021 (2)
- February 2021 (3)
- January 2021 (2)
- December 2020 (2)
- November 2020 (1)
- October 2020 (3)
- September 2020 (3)
- August 2020 (1)
- July 2020 (3)
- June 2020 (3)
- May 2020 (1)
- April 2020 (2)
- March 2020 (2)
- January 2020 (3)
- December 2019 (5)
- November 2019 (4)
- October 2019 (2)
- September 2019 (5)
- August 2019 (2)
- July 2019 (1)
- June 2019 (2)
- May 2019 (3)
- April 2019 (4)
- March 2019 (3)
- February 2019 (2)
- January 2019 (4)
- December 2018 (2)
- November 2018 (3)
- October 2018 (2)
- September 2018 (1)
- August 2018 (5)
- July 2018 (5)
- June 2018 (5)
- May 2018 (7)
- April 2018 (3)
- March 2018 (6)
- February 2018 (3)
- January 2018 (4)
- December 2017 (2)
- November 2017 (5)
- October 2017 (4)
- September 2017 (2)
- August 2017 (5)
- July 2017 (4)
- June 2017 (4)
- May 2017 (4)
- April 2017 (4)
- March 2017 (4)
- February 2017 (4)
- January 2017 (4)
- December 2016 (8)
- November 2016 (7)
- October 2016 (10)
- September 2016 (8)
- August 2016 (7)
- July 2016 (9)
- June 2016 (9)
- May 2016 (2)
- April 2016 (4)
- March 2016 (3)
- February 2016 (4)
- January 2016 (3)
- December 2015 (3)
- November 2015 (4)
- October 2015 (2)
- September 2015 (3)
- August 2015 (3)
- July 2015 (28)
- June 2015 (25)
- May 2015 (31)
- April 2015 (23)
- March 2015 (21)
- February 2015 (15)
- January 2015 (19)
- December 2014 (13)
- November 2014 (19)
- October 2014 (31)
- September 2014 (26)
- August 2014 (20)
- July 2014 (2)
Links
Tag Archives: Vladimir Putin
From the diary of a writer-publisher: 23
16 May 2023 The suspense about the Ukrainian ‘counter-offensive’ is terrible. I hope it will last. It winds the Russians up and keeps them guessing. Moreover, except at Bakhmut, Russian forces have been in deep defensive positions for months now, … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Badenweiler, Bakhmut, Brexit, butterflies, conceptual photography, conservation, counter offensive, Crimea, Dr Schwörer, Duke of Burgundy Fritillary, fakes, Kyiv, Lavrentii Beria, Le Monde Diplomatique, Leo Rabeneck, military defeat, Moskovskii Komsomolets, newspapers, Olga Knipper-Chekhova, photographs, Pinterest, Queen of Spain Fritillary, Riodinidae, Russian Army, The Lake District, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, W.H. Smith, Zaporizhzhia
1 Comment
From the diary of a writer-publisher: 19
4 November On its back page, the voluminous weekly DIE ZEIT, which I still think is the best newspaper in Europe, always carries a large photograph of an animal looking at the camera with a distinctive expression, and the caption … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Adolf Hitler, Alexander Korotko, China, choughs, chrysanthemums, comments, Die Zeit, Edward Lear, emeritus professors, Georg Trakl, haiku, images, Iona, Islay, Kherson, malt whisky, Mexico, Osip Mandel'shtam, peace conferences, professors, Russo-Ukrainian War, soap, soapstone, Sudetenland, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky, war poems, war poetry, whiskies, Winston Churchill
3 Comments
Man of sorrows
I was not planning or expecting to write this, but I feel I must, whether I prove right or wrong, because we all ought to be aware that the Russo-Ukrainian War is now at a critical point. It is the … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Armistice, artillery, Belorussia, betrayal, Chechnia, democracy, Emmanuel Macron, EU, France, Great Britain, Kiev, Mario Draghi, military strategy, missiles, NATO, Olaf Scholz, peace, peace deals, peace talks, petards, Poland, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Severodonetsk, special military operations, Syria, UK, Ukraine, United States of America, USA, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky, war
Leave a comment
A writer-publisher’s Ukrainian diary: 5
7 May 2022 People are, I know, frightened by Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons. I have suggested that even western leaders have been sufficiently frightened by these threats to be militarily unproactive. This means that Putin doesn’t need to … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Anatolii Chubais, anecdotes, Boris Yel'tsin, comedy, comments, Commonwealth of Independent States, Czechoslovakia, Empire style, Finland, Hungary, irony, Jill Biden, Leonid Brezhnev, Mikhail Gorbachev, Moscow, Nancy Pelosi, nuclear weapons, Pavel Palazhchenko, Pierre Trudeau, Poland, rakes, Russo-Ukrainian War, Stalin, The Crimea, Ukraine, Victory Day, Vladimir Putin, Vladislav Zubok, Volodymyr Zelensky, World War 2
2 Comments
War and woof poetry
Judging by allusions and quotations in his speeches, Volodymyr Zelensky either has a good knowledge of literature himself, or his team does. Unlike Putin, he speaks in a cultured manner, beautifully clearly and expressively, with a literary turn. In an … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Alexander Blok, Alexander Pushkin, Berlin, compromise, dogs, Nazi Germany, Peter Levi, propaganda, Red Army, Robin Milner-Gulland, Russia, Russian poetry, sentimentality, Sergei Yesenin, talant, To Russia's Slanderers, translation, USSR, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vladimir Putin, Volodomyr Zelensky, war poetry, World War 2, Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Leave a comment
A writer-publisher’s Ukrainian diary: 4
23 April 2022 It is St George’s Day, hypothetically William Shakespeare’s birthday, and we are in Stratford-upon-Avon witnessing the civic celebrations, which are beautifully done, inclusive, happy, humorous, almost a Spring flower festival, and a really moving tribute to Shakespeare’s … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Aleksei Gromyko, Aleksei Kozyrev, Alexander Gorchakov, atonement, catacomb Christians, Charles Talleyrand, Chester Wilmot, comments, David Aaronovitch, David Petraeus, General Dvornikov, General Gerasimov, General Mezintsev, Henry VI, Joachim von Ribbentrop, KGB, Khar'kiv, Mariupol, medical diagnoses, military strategy, Moldova, Moscow Patriarchate, Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, NATO, Nikolai Gogol, proxy war, repentance, Rett Syndrome, Russia, Saddam Hussein, salients, Sergei Lavrov, St George's Day, steroids, Stratford-upon-Avon, tank battles, Tariq Aziz, The Donbas, Transnistria, trench warfare, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky, Wagner Group, William Shakespeare, World War 2, World War I
Leave a comment
A writer-publisher’s Ukrainian diary: 3
11 April 2022 Whilst coming back from the shop with today’s newspaper, I could see a neighbour on the other side of the street who was born at the gates of Mauthausen concentration camp six days before it was liberated … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged 'The Steppe', Anton Chekhov, appeasement, Bellingcat, Bletchley, Cambridge, Crimea, Czechoslovakia, Dnipro, Donbas, Donetsk, FSB, KGB, Mauthausen, Max Hastings, morale, NATO, Nazi Germany, Polonia, Russia, Sergei Beseda, Simferopol, steppeland, tank battles, The Times, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky, Yalta, Yasinovataya, Zhdanov
4 Comments
‘The negation of everything worth living for’
In 2010, when the Putin Project was still just a monocracy and one could converse freely over the phone with friends in Russia, I remarked to one that Russia seemed to have ‘reached about 1892’, i.e. a point during the … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Alexander III, anarchy, Andrei Amal'rik, Angela Merkel, anti-Semitism, apocalypse, autocracy, censorship, Communism, democracy, dogs, Estonia, ideology, irrationalism, Jewish people, Joseph Conrad, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Moscow Patriarchate, Otto von Bismarck, perestroika, Poland, Putin Project, rule of law, satanry, State capitalism, Ukraine, USSR, Vladimir Putin
2 Comments
From the diary of a writer-publisher: 28
11 February 2024 Do not be put off trying an ‘Escape Room’ because you fear claustrophobia: you aren’t actually locked into it, you simply have to solve a series of problems (often involving locks) in order to complete a narrative … Continue reading →