Author Archives: Patrick Miles

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Calderonia is an experiment in biography through a blog. It tells the story of George and Kittie Calderon’s lives from 30 July 1914 to 30 July 1915 from day to day as it happened, but exactly 100 years afterwards. It therefore … Continue reading

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15/1/16. One of the most difficult problems of researching Kittie Calderon’s life after George’s death is deciding how much she travelled abroad. After Percy Lubbock married Lady Sybil Cuffe in 1926, the couple lived in the fabulous Villa Medici at … Continue reading

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1/1/16. A very happy new year to everyone. As you will gather from the above, we are now presenting Calderonia slightly differently. ‘Featured Comments’ will soon replace ‘Comments’, although all past Comments will still be accessible. Links will be introduced between past … Continue reading

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Faithful followers of this blog/website will recall twelve months ago the Christmas of 1914 at Foxwold, Brasted Chart, in Kent. The Pym, Lubbock and Calderon families all participated, as well as two refugees from German-occupied Belgium who were living with … Continue reading

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16/12/15. It seems to me in retrospect that every one of the fifteen chapters I have written of George Calderon’s biography is perilously different in length, form and style; but none is so different as the one I am writing … Continue reading

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9/12/15. Cambridge Professor of International History David Reynolds’s lecture at the Perse School on 2 December entitled ‘Making Peace with the Great War: Centenary Reflections’, was a virtuoso performance — restrained, relaxed, magisterial, deeply challenging. The audience of about a hundred and … Continue reading

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23/11/15. I am now reading and digesting every item in Kittie’s archive that relates to the period 1923-50, and it’s immeasurably deepening my understanding of her life in that period, which spans Sheet in Hampshire (1923-34) and Kennington in Kent (1934-48). The … Continue reading

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16/11/15. I have been reading the copy of The Sayings of Lao Tsŭ (John Murray, 1905) that George Calderon gave his wife Kittie on her birthday, 5 March 1905. I had always known that George was interested in Taoism, but the signs … Continue reading

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9/11/15. It is a huge relief to have ‘finished writing’ the penultimate chapter, ‘Aftermath and Masterpiece’, of my biography. Although it is only 9000 words long, it has taken me ten weeks to research and write (in pencil). It has been by … Continue reading

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2/11/15. I have a hunch that the word ‘unconscionable’ features regularly in biographers’ conversations with themselves… It has taken me an ‘unconscionable’ four and a half years to reach the endgame of writing George Calderon’s biography, when I thought it would take … Continue reading

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26/10/15. It was remiss of me, in my last Comment, not to address the first paragraph of Clare Hopkins’s last Comment, which concerned commemoration. Clare began the paragraph by asking ‘Can there ever be a last word on the subject … Continue reading

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12/10/15. There were dozens of books published by English and American visitors to Tahiti between about 1890 and 1930, and Rupert Brooke’s poems about the island became extremely well known. I have to admit that this literature is so large that I … Continue reading

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25/9/15. A natural consequence of turning the blog into a Website is that no-one (it seems!) wants to leave a Comment, because visitors who followed it every day last year no longer have a reason for looking in, and casual viewers now … Continue reading

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17/09/15. We have had a wobble of excitement this week. An advertisement appeared in AbeBooks entitled ‘Calderon, Lieut George Leslie — Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry — an Original Photographic Portrait […] printed circa 1919’. Sensational! The implication was that it was … Continue reading

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2/09/15. If you haven’t seen the latest cracker of a Comment from Clare Hopkins, I recommend that you do (top right)…and contribute to the discussion! Clare is absolutely right that in ‘laying out George and Kitties daily lives’ I have invited readers … Continue reading

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25/8/15. If you haven’t seen the latest cracker of a Comment from Clare Hopkins, I recommend that you do (top right)…and contribute to the discussion! A special part of my in-depth research of Kittie’s life 1915-22, for the next chapter, has … Continue reading

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