Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
George Calderon, 1912
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Captain of the 11
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
George Calderon c.1901
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Recent Comments
- Patrick Miles on Guest post by Philip Andrews-Speed: The concept of path dependence explains much in today’s world All this is HIGHLY relevant to my question, Philip -- thank you yet again. I must say, to the uninformed observer like myself it seems as though China studiously cultivates... (October 28, 2026 at 3:42 pm)
- Philip Andrews-Speed on Guest post by Philip Andrews-Speed: The concept of path dependence explains much in today’s world Thank you, Patrick. I will answer your question indirectly. It can be argued that China's political and legal cultures continue to reflect a mix of Confucian and Legalist... (October 28, 2026 at 11:58 am)
- Patrick Miles on Guest post by Philip Andrews-Speed: The concept of path dependence explains much in today’s world Excellent summary, Philip, thank you enormously as my O Level history of China is very thin. This is political culture, but what about other forms of culture? Could their... (October 27, 2026 at 2:48 pm)
- Philip Andrews-Speed on Guest post by Philip Andrews-Speed: The concept of path dependence explains much in today’s world A trite answer, Patrick, that makes no reference to path dependence would be that after decades of chaos the Party leadership sought stability. After the collapse of the... (October 27, 2026 at 2:39 pm)
- Patrick Miles on Guest post by Philip Andrews-Speed: The concept of path dependence explains much in today’s world Thank you so much, Philip, for your time in writing these succinct and admirable responses. I was very interested to read that Pierson switched from 'increasing returns'... (October 27, 2026 at 12:24 pm)
Author Archives: Patrick Miles
The diary of a writer-publisher: 41
4 September 2026 Like many other people, I’m sure, I would love to say to Amazon: ‘You’re fired!’ To my chagrin, however, I have to admit the moment hasn’t quite come. In 2019, when we started publishing Sam&Sam paperbacks through … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Amazon, autumn, butterflies, Catherine Merridale, China, Duma, Emmanuel College, haikus, Humming-Bird Hawkmoth, Japanese people, Night of Stone, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, path dependence, Philip Andrews-Speed, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, The Goathead Press, The White Bow/Ghoune, Vladimir Putin, Yabloko Party
Leave a comment
‘Library Notes’ (5)
Anyone learning Russian surely has only to see the word for apple, yabloko, to remember it forever, because it contains three round letters that look just like rolling apples. The word is an apple! I think Russians like the word, too. There … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Academican Bromlei, Anton Chekhov, Anton Chekhov: A Short Life, antonovki, apple pie, apples, Beauty of Bath, Bramley apple, British Library Lending Division, duplicate books, Evgenii Evtushenko, Golden Delicious, Grigorii Iavlinskii, Ivan Bunin, Ivan Michurin, pippins, pomology, Vladimir Putin, Yabloko Party, Yulian Vladimirovich Bromley
Leave a comment
‘Library Notes’ (4)
This is the penultimate in my series of posts about books that have been in my Russian library — which is going to a bibliophile in the States — for years, but which I had never read. As soon as … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Anna Akhmatova, bereavement, Bolsheviks, cannibalism, Catherine Merridale, commemoration, comments, Communism, death, E.H. Carr, famine, genocide, grieving, Holodomor, Joseph Stalin, Lenin's mausoleum, memory, Norman Stone, PTSD, Russia, Soviet history, The Great Terror, USSR, Vladimir Putin, Yezhovshchina
Leave a comment
The diary of a writer-publisher: 40
1 July 2026 I attend an uncostumed run-through of the RSC Cherry Orchard (previews open in nine days time and the press night is 21st). Met at the stage door of the Swan by the company SM, who makes a … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Amazon, Anton Chekhov, Arden Hotel, atheism, Bill Pullman, Cheshire Cat, cover designs, Elizabeth Freestone, F.M. Dostoevsky, Firs, G.M. Livshits, Helen Hunt, James Miles, Kenneth Branagh, Laura Wade, Lopakhin, Melikhovo, Mikhail Bakhtin, mimicry, Royal Shakespeare Company, RSC, run-throughs, sakura, Stratford-upon-Avon, Swan Theatre, Tamara Harvey, The Cherry Orchard, The Goathead Press, The White Bow/Ghoune, translation, versions, Yepikhodov
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
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged A.V. Lunacharskii, atheism, Bolshevik power, Communism, conversion of Rus', Dead Sea Scrolls, E.M. Iaroslavskii, G.M. Livshits, Iosif Amusin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Millenium of Christianity in Russia, N.K. Krupskaia, Qumran community, religions, religious cults, Russian Orthodox Church, scientific atheism, Sergei Bychkov, USSR, zhdanovshchina
Leave a comment
‘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
Guest post by Philip Andrews-Speed: The concept of path dependence explains much in today’s world
The topic of path dependence arose in email exchanges I had recently with Patrick Miles concerning the current state of Russia and China. In my studies of energy governance in China, I have had to dig deep into the nation’s … Continue reading →