Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
George Calderon, 1912
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
George Calderon c.1901
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Captain of the 11
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
DnA
Longer-term followers of Calderonia will be aware of my preoccupation with Edwardian ‘dilettantism’ and ‘amateurism’. Laurence Binyon, Martin Shaw and Percy Lubbock went out of their way to stress that George was not a dilettante, and the word ‘amateur’ was … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged amateurism, biographies, biography, comments, dilettantism, fringe theatre, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Martin Shaw, Percy Lubbock, publishers, Sam&Sam, self-publishing, semantic, TLS
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Jacketed!
I herewith post the front and back cover of my book, designed by Dan Mogford, who has been a delight to work with and whose first-rate services are not pricey. The front and back flaps are also ready, but I don’t … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged biographies, biography, comments, Dan Mogford, Derwent May, Emmetts, Frederick Hollyer, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, George Clooney, Harvey Pitcher, jacket, jacket design, Laurence Brockliss, Sean Connery
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George Calderon and the gender pay gap
Obviously I believe George Calderon’s life is interesting in itself — dramatic, even — but another reason I have written his biography is that many of the issues of the day that he responded to are still with us (e.g. … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian marriage, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged biographies, biography, comments, economics, feminism, gender difference, gender pay gap, George Calderon, James Boswell, market economies, market forces, market value, Men's League for Opposing Woman Suffrage, Millicent Fawcett, National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, Octavia Hill, political economy, Samuel Johnson, suffragism, suffragists, The Guardian, The Times, Woman in Relation to the State, women's wages
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Far End draws closer
On 26 January I blogged about the house Far End at Kingham in Oxfordshire, which I had heard about for the first time from Mrs Mary Lowe, whom we traced as the copyright holder for unpublished works of the American … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Anne Douglas Sedgwick, Balbec, Basil de Sélincourt, biographies, biography, D.H. Lawrence, Dardanelles, F.R. Leavis, Far End, Gallipoli, Garsington, George Calderon, Giotto, Ian Lowe, Julia Chapin Alsop, Kingham, Kittie Calderon, Lady Ottoline Morrell, Laurence Binyon, Marcel Proust, Mary Lowe, New College Oxford, Oxfordshire, Petersfield, Piccadilly, Sir Edward Grey, Swan & Edgar, Tante, The Encounter, The Good Life, The Great War, The Little French Girl, Third Battle of Krithia, vegetables, Virago Classics, Walt Whitman, William Blake, Women in Love, World War 2, World War I
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Aleksei Remizov: the Imp has landed!
On 23 April 1914 Bertram Christian, of the publishers James Nisbet & Co. Ltd, wrote to George Calderon suggesting that he produce for them a volume of stories by the Russian writer Aleksei Remizov (1877-1957). There had been a glowing … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Aleksei Remizov, Andrei Belyi, Anton Chekhov, Bertram Christian, biography, Brian Murphy, Columbia University Press, comments, Demon Feasts, fairy tales, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, George Calderon, Il'ia Tolstoi, James Nisbet & Co. Ltd, kenosis, Lev Tolstoi, Marakulin, Michel Fokine, modernism, Nikolai Gogol, Roger Keys, Russian Orthodoxy, Sisters of the Cross, St Petersburg, Stephen Graham, strastoterpets, Tahiti, Times Literary Supplement
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The Castle…of Oz?
Followers may remember that last year I also worked on a book with mathematical physicist-theologian John Polkinghorne, derived from a year’s conversations we had about his views on eschatology (i.e. nothing less than the life and death of humans, animals … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged armed forces, Botcham's Beardificator, bureaucracy, Cambridge City Council, computers, copyright, Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, databases, email, eschatology, EU Directive on Term of Copyright, Fogeyism, Franz Kafka, John Polkinghorne, Occam', Occam's Razor, programmers, publishers, Publishers at Large, self-publishing, sociopaths, submissions, The Castle, The Net, The Wizard of Oz, totalitarianism, websites, Yellow Brick Road
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Has one become a Fogey?
In 1985, when Sam&Sam needed an ISBN number for N.A. Berdiaev, Aforizmy, I rang up the then registration agency and they sent me a form by post. I filled the form in (by hand, of course) and sent it back to … Continue reading
Sam&Sam publishers — a brief history
George Calderon: Edwardian Genius will be published under the imprint Sam&Sam. ‘What?’ you ask. ‘What on earth’s that?’ Quite. It was deliberately concocted to give nothing away, because it originated in Russia in the period of samizdat. Having been a dissident … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Alexander Pushkin, Camizdat, carbons, comments, Duma, Georgii Fedotov, Joseph Brodsky, Joseph Stalin, KGB, Maia, Martis, mice, Nikolai Berdiaev, perestroika, publishing, Sam&Sam, samizdat, Samuel Goathead, sonnets, Sophie Koulomzin, typewriters, Vladimir Lenin, William Shakespeare
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I accept the white feather
I am hoping to attend the ceremony at Ors on 4 November this year to commemorate the death of Wilfred Owen a hundred years ago (see Damian Grant’s post of 4 November 2016), and thought we might go on from … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged A Group Photograph, Alexis de Gunzberg, Andrew Tatham, Armistice, Auschwitz, Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, Clare Hopkins, Colonel Gordon Wilson, commemoration, comments, Damian Grant, George Calderon, Helles, Journey's End, Last Post, Menin Gate, Ors, R.C. Sheriff, Royal Horse Guards, Sanctuary Wood, The Blues, The Great War, Thiepval, Thiepval Memorial, Verdun, white feather, Wilfred Owen, World War I, Ypres, Zillebeke
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Cogitations of an indexer
A profound thank you to all who commented or emailed me about the illustrations to my biography. Nearly everyone expressed a preference for having them in the text as close as possible to their mention, so that is what I … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
Tagged 'The Dead', Ada, biographies, biography, Charles Dickens, comments, computer programs, Dante Alighieri, Edward Garnett, Edward Lear, Edward VII, geological terms, George Calderon, Helen Smith, indexes, James Joyce, Jenny Uglow, John Aubrey, Joseph Conrad, Kittie Calderon, Marcel Proust, Nina Corbet, Occam's Razor, Ruth Scurr
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Progress
It is now a month since I fired the starting-pistol for publishing George Calderon: Edwardian Genius myself on 4 June 2018. Every writer I know assured me we could bring the book out in six months…but what they didn’t tell me … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged biographies, comments, design, fonts, format, George Calderon, Ian Strathcarron, illustrations, indexes, ISBN numbers, layout, printers, publishing, self-publishing, typesetting, walls of words
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Far End: a new Calderonian world
The greatest pleasure to have come out of the hair-tearing ordeal of obtaining permission to publish quotations from scores of letters to George and Kittie written a hundred years ago (see 17 April 2017) has been to correspond with Mrs … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Acton Reynald, Anne Douglas Sedgwick, Anton Chekhov, Basil de Sélincourt, biography, Bruce Richmond, Chipping Norton, comments, Far End, Foxwold, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Goncourt Brothers, Hugh Walpole, Ivan Turgenev, Kingham, Kittie Calderon, Lady Ottoline Morrell, Laurence Binyon, Petersfield, Sir Edward Grey, The Encounter, The Great War, Victoria Cholmondeley, World War I, Ypres
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Attempting to not-bore for England about limericks
I must apologise to all subscribers for their having received notification last week of a blog post that had no text in it! This was the result of human error, aka Aussie Flu. Unfortunately, when I did write the text … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Alfred Tennyson, biographies, biography, comments, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Lear, Evey Pym, Foxwold, Franz Kafka, George Calderon, Horatio Nelson, Jenny Uglow, John Pym, Joseph Brodsky, Karl Marx, Kittie Calderon, Lewis Carroll, limericks, Marie Curie, Rudyard Kipling, Russia, Violet Pym, Wadham College
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Tense, moi?
If you sensed unwonted stress at the end of my previous post, you were right. When I decided at the beginning of January that we would bring out the book in six months, I calculated that as ‘the beginning of … Continue reading →