George Calderon, 1912
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
George Calderon c.1901
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Captain of the 11
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)Recent Comments
- Patrick Miles on Guest Post by John Pym: A Soviet film of ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ Many, many thanks for reprising, Johnnie, for I know how busy you are. How serendipitous that you had just seen a 'live' performance of Murnau's b&w Sunrise! I gather from... (March 14, 2025 at 10:21 am)
- John Pym on Guest Post by John Pym: A Soviet film of ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ March 8, 2025: Last evening, I watched a digital transfer of a black-and-white movie, made by an expatriate German in California nearly a hundred years ago, in a packed town... (March 10, 2025 at 4:36 pm)
- Patrick Miles on Guest Post by John Pym: A Soviet film of ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ Your response here is (obviously) deeply informed... Thank you very much indeed. In comparing the coach ride to Simferopol in Heifitz's film with the chariot race in Ben-Hur... (March 5, 2025 at 10:01 am)
- John Pym on Guest Post by John Pym: A Soviet film of ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ Black-and-white camerawork was, I suspect, as natural to the director of The Lady with the Little Dog as breathing in and out or eating his breakfast. I doubt that he was... (February 28, 2025 at 11:01 pm)
- Patrick Miles on Guest Post by John Pym: A Soviet film of ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ We are deeply favoured and honoured to publish on Calderonia the eminent film critic John Pym's magnificent tribute to Heifitz's film The Lady with the Little Dog, perfectly... (February 24, 2025 at 10:56 am)
Author Archives: Patrick Miles
The magnificent Mary Ann
Long-term followers of Calderonia will recall that I had always had a theory that the person who taught George to speak Russian credibly before he set out for St Petersburg in 1895 was a ‘Mrs Shapter’, but in my biography … Continue reading
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Tagged Alexander I, Andrew Jones, Anton Chekhov, biographies, biography, Camille Silvy, Clara Calderon, Constance Garnett, Evan Hodgson, Exeter, Francke family, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Glasgow Repertory Theatre, Harry Leeke Gibbs, Harvey Pitcher, John Hodgson, John Shapter, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Manya Guseva, Mary Ann Shapter, Mary Gibbs Shapter, Michael Pursglove, Mrs Shapter, Museum of the Home, National Portrait Gallery, Nicholas I, Olga Novikoff, oracy, P.H. Calderon, Russia, Sally Jones, silver, sketchbooks, St John's Wood Clique, St Petersburg, The Seagull, The Smiths of Moscow, theatre, Thomas Shapter, toddy ladle, Whishaw family, Yeames family
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Cambridge Tales 7: ‘The Folding Party’
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Tagged Bedroom, Blue Pagoda, Cambridge, Cambridge Tales, Carcanet, Chris Hardie, Friedrich Hölderlin, G.W.F. Hegel, Gitanes, haiku, Helios, John Milton, Julian Slawianski, Karl Marx, Leonard Cohen, parties, Pink Floyd, poetry, poetry magazines, River Cam, students, suicide, Tintagel, undergraduates
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Guest post by Harvey Pitcher: Melikhovo 2004
This recollection goes back almost twenty years, but it does not seem that long ago. As I grow older, time does not slow down, as one might expect, but races away at an alarming rate. Chekhov had died in 1904 … Continue reading
Cambridge Tales 6: ‘The Tower’
A small brown-man had a narrow bedroom, a spacious living-room, and a gyp-room (more like a galley) at the top of a Gothic quadrangle. The living-room contained a fluted white mantelpiece with a gas-fire, a moth-eaten charcoal grey sofa against … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged bowler hats, brown-man, Cambridge colleges, Cambridge Tales, Franz Kafka, paranoia, persecution mania, towers, writer's block, writers
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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
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Short story (concluded): ‘My First Communist’
In the Easter holidays Peter went on a skiing trip to Switzerland organised by the headmaster. I could have gone myself, but my parents didn’t have the money. Privately, I was intrigued that the Freres could afford it either, but … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary, Uncategorized
Tagged A.E.U., Body Odour, Brighton, Christianity, Communism, demonstrations, G.C.E., Helen Minter, N.U.M., Russian language, skiing, Switzerland, tortoises, Utopia, Utopianism, zoology
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Keith Dewhurst: a new Spring of writing
Keith Dewhurst (whose Wikipedia entry does not log half his achievements) was born in 1931. I would say he is the greatest survivor of the British post-war theatrical renaissance that is often compared to the Elizabethan-Jacobean phenomenon. As well as … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged art dealing, Autumnia: Three Novellas, Clement Attlee, COVID-19, Elizabeth I, Elizabeth II, English Civil War, Iraq, Isle of Wight, James I, Keith Dewhurst, King's Men, Lark Rise, lockdowns, London, Manchester United, National Theatre, novella, plotlines, Primavera, PTSD, Puritans, Royal Court, The History of Polly Bowler, theatrical renaissance, Venice Three, wokery, World War 2, Z-Cars, zealotry
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Guest post by Jim Miles: Call My Agent!
One of my jobs is teaching English at a language school in Cambridge. I have students varying in age from teenagers right up to retired adults, and from countries all over the world. This makes the work very interesting but … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged acting agencies, bobo, Call My Agent, Camille Cottin, comments, Dix pour cent, Dominique Besnehard, France, guest posts, hipster, IELTS, James Miles, Juliette Binoche, language teaching, Netflix, Paris, scooters, Sigourney Weaver, subtitles, translation
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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 22
24 February 2023 A recent study made by a reliable Moscow source indicates that 22% of the Russians polled were fervently in favour of the war on Ukraine, 20% were deeply opposed to it, and the rest (58%) ‘had no … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Personal commentary
Tagged acting agencies, Alexander Pushkin, Alexandra Cann, autocracy, ballet, Ballets Russes, biographies, books, Boris Godunov, Call My Agent, Callimachus, comments, democracy, Dix pour cent, France, freedom, Friedrich Nietzsche, George Balanchine, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Granta Publishing, independent publishing, James Miles, Jennifer Homans, Lincoln Kirstein, literary agents, Michel Fokine, Moscow, Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, New York City Ballet, opinion polls, responsibility, Russia, Sam&Sam, School of American Ballet, theatre agents, theosophy, Ukraine, Vladimir Soloviev, Volodymyr Zelensky, William Rothenstein
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Cambridge Tales 5: ‘East of the Rhine’ (Concluded)
One afternoon in the last week of November, there was a soft knock on the door of my room. Before me stood an elegantly thin woman in her late twenties, wearing an extremely expensive-looking bleu nuit cashmere coat with a … Continue reading
Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged alcoholism, atrocities, Azita, Bosnia, Cambridge Tales, cemeteries, defiance, Eric Smith, genocide, Iran, massacres, militarism, NATO, Nazis, Persia, Rhine, Serbia, Srebrenica, Territorial Army, The British Army, ties, Vitez, war crimes, war graves, Winston Churchill, World War 2, Yugoslavia
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Guest post by John Pym: One of my first Communists
Patrick Miles named me the dedicatee of his story My First Communist published here in two parts in the spring, so let me return the compliment with this ‘sketch from memory’ of the redoubtable Yvonne Kapp – one of my own … Continue reading →