A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Captain of the 11
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
George Calderon, 1912
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
George Calderon c.1901
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Recent Comments
- Catherine Brown on The diary of a writer-publisher: 38 Thank you so much for this wonderful recollection of Mr Prynne. In case of interest, my own, which concerns Prynne in the 1990s, is here:... (May 21, 2026 at 11:20 am)
- harvey pitcher on The diary of a writer-publisher: 37 well, i had a shock when you said you'd acquired a dog but then i saw it wasn't. i have nothing against dogs though i prefer cats but fiona is very opposed to dogs or rather... (April 15, 2026 at 4:35 pm)
- Laurence Brockliss on A new story by John Melmoth: ‘Snowballs’ What a pitch perfect short story: crisp, graphic, nostalgic, evocative and mischievous. The injustice of schoolboy punishments comes in many forms, is never forgotten and is... (March 10, 2026 at 10:09 am)
- Patrick Miles on The diary of a writer-publisher: 36 Wonderful, Andrew! Thank you very much. I will borrow that title, if you don't object... I hope you will allow Calderonia to feature your own next magnum opus after the Great... (February 28, 2026 at 8:18 am)
- Andrew Tatham on The diary of a writer-publisher: 36 A brilliantly evocative and thought-provoking medley of observations that would not be out of place in 'The collected life of a flat-cap penguin' (your words, only slightly... (February 27, 2026 at 9:48 am)
Author Archives: Patrick Miles
‘Library Notes’ (2)
This children’s book of 79 lines of poetry was stuck on its side behind the Brodsky section of my library (six books published between 1967 and 1993). I’d completely forgotten its existence — although it was clearly inscribed by me … Continue reading
Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary, Uncategorized
Tagged Alexander Pushkin, Anton Chekhov, ballads, censorship, children's literature, comments, Constantine Cafavy, Edward Lear, fairytales, Joseph Brodsky, Kornei Chukovskii, Leningrad, Lewis Carroll, Metropol Hotel, nonsense poetry, nursery rhymes, The Little Tugboat, USSR, Viktor Tauber, Z. Arshakuni
Leave a comment
The diary of a writer-publisher: 39
20 May 2026 A thirty-five minute phone call from Tamara Harvey, who is directing the RSC production of The Cherry Orchard, which plays at Stratford from 10 July to 29 August. Tamara wanted to check pronunciation of the Russian names in … Continue reading
Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Amazon, Anton Chekhov, Crimea, Kenneth Branagh, King Charles III, Lopakhin, Meldrewism, patronymics, Ranyevskaya, Richard Eyre, RSC, Russian names, Russo-Ukrainian War, Tamara Harvey, telecons, The Cherry Orchard, The Tempest, The White Bow/Ghoune, Trofimov, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin
Leave a comment
The diary of a writer-publisher: 38
21 April 2026 A one-to-one meeting in the RSC theatre at Stratford with Tamara Harvey, Co-Artistic Director. In October I had printed out from the RSC website the two-page publicity for her production of The Cherry Orchard in the Swan Theatre … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Cambridge University, Goat1, Goat2, Gonville & Caius College, Helen Hunt, impostors, J.H. Prynne, Kenneth Branagh, Laura Wade, Mikhail Kuz'min, Moscow Patriarchate, NT, Peter Hall, Roman Catholic Church, RSC, Tamara Harvey, The Cherry Orchard, The Goathead Press, The Times, The White Bow/Ghoune
1 Comment
The Europeans 2019
Pull on your driving gloves, Gordon, Light up your Billiard pipe! Edge out and I’ll slam shut the garage, We’re off to the civilized life! In two hours we’ll be down at Dover, This Bentley’s not going near Fife! Cher Bertrand, chère … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Bermuda shorts, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Cagnes, Cap Gris Nez, comments, Dover, EU, Europeans, Fife, France, gravy, Great Britain, hedonism, How To Get On In Society, John Betjeman, Melissa & Gordon, oikophobia, Paris, pipes, socca, Venice
Leave a comment
The essential Oxford novel
As Calderonians know, there were two wildly popular novels about Oxford University in the nineteenth century: Cuthbert Bede’s The Adventures of Mr Verdant Green (1853) and George’s The Adventures of Downy V. Green, Rhodes Scholar at Oxford (1902). They have … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged C.P. Snow, Cambridge University, campus novels, Cuthbert Bede, Dead Souls, Don Quixote, Dorothy Sayers, F.T. Unwin, feminism, George Calderon, Hamlet, Horace Hare, J.P. Stern, John Milton, M.R. James, Mary-Jo Poltowa, Moll Flanders, Morton Pinkney, Niccolo Machiavelli, Nikolai Gogol, Oxford University, Penfold Huddlestone, picaresque novels, satire, St Jocasta's College, The Adventures of Downy V. Green, The Adventures of Mr Verdant Green, The Good Soldier Švejk, Tom Sharpe, Voltaire
2 Comments
Bill Lewis: ‘The Turning’
Kevin Bailey, editor of the long-running HQ Poetry Magazine, has described Bill Lewis as ‘one of our best contemporary poets’. Lewis is a national poet: he is rooted in his rural Kentish childhood (he was a founder of the Medway … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Bill Lewis, Christmas, Dead Days, Deal Hoodeners, drums, duende, fathers, Green Man, Hammer films, hooden horses, Janus, Kent, Medway Poets, Native Americans, New Year, nine cold children, nuclear holocaust, shamans, The Damned, The Holly and the Ivy, The Turning, World War I, Yuletide
Leave a comment
Joseph Brodsky: A Christmas poem
They didn’t care about the desert that lay all around, or the blizzard that wrapped them in ghoulish sounds, or how cramped it was in a shepherd’s hut; that from all other spaces the world pushed them out. For, firstly, … Continue reading
Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged blizzard, Christmas poems, desert, Giotto di Bondone, Jesus Christ, Joseph Brodsky, poetry, refugees, Russian poetry, Space, St Joseph, Star of Bethlehem, stars, The Child, The Flight into Egypt, The Nativity, The Virgin Mary, verse translation
Leave a comment
The diary of a writer-publisher: 35
13 October 2025 There were a number of letters in The Times earlier this month describing butterflies that the authors had witnessed turning up at funerals and even settling on the coffin. The point was that people found it mysterious and strangely … Continue reading
Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged affectionate forms, Amazon, animism, Anton Chekhov, Badenweiler, butterflies, Coalition of the Willing, defeatism, diminutive forms, Donald Trump, economic sanctions, EU, funerals, John Polkinghorne, Joseph Brodsky, moths, Ol'ga Knipper, peace process, publication dates, quails, Roger Boyes, Russia, Rustem Umerov, seagulls, second presence, Steve Witkoff, The Goathead Press, The Seagull, The Times, The White Bow/Ghoune, translation, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Washington, What Can We Hope For?
Leave a comment
Goathead is launched
Dear Subscribers to Calderonia, The Anglo-Russian publisher Sam&Sam, which was founded in Moscow in 1974 and published George Calderon: Edwardian Genius in Britain in 2018, has now been divided into Sam&Sam owned and based exclusively in Russia, and The Goathead Press … Continue reading
Goathead: The Complete Sonnets
As promised in our previous post, here is a facsimile of the first, only, and definitive edition of all the sonnets of Samuel Goathead, published ‘by CUP’ in 1975: © Patrick Miles, 1975 ADVERTISEMENT SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged anniversaries, bears, Belial, breeches, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, coins, gardening, George Steiner, goats, J.H. Prong, Jacobean poetry, King's College, mice, Moscow, Muscovy, pansies, parodies, River Cam, Samuel Goathead, sonnets, St Anthony, The Complete Sonnets of Samuel Goathead, Walter Snail, William Shakespeare
Leave a comment
‘Library Notes’ (3)
Yes, I know… Both the title and uniform of this Soviet book are so forbidding that I am hardly surprised I never read it when I bought it (1986) and did not recognise it recently when cataloguing my Russian library … Continue reading →