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?
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
George Calderon c.1901
Captain of the 11
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
George Calderon, 1912
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
George and Kittie Calderon 1905Recent Comments
- Patrick Miles on Source? Dear Katy, it's lovely to hear from you again! I hope you are well down there in Kent. Would you believe it, I too typed in that first line, as I thought it was perhaps the... (May 12, 2025 at 11:45 am)
- Roger Pulvers on Source? Ah, it is simply a тайна ремесла. But, I assure you, I did not use AI. Please give the book to someone who has not read it and is in your neighbourhood. (May 12, 2025 at 9:57 am)
- Katy George on Source? Pipped to the post! I typed in the first line line of the 2nd paragraph and it came up straight away to the source on Faded Page. (May 12, 2025 at 9:56 am)
- Patrick Miles on Source? Roger, you're a genius! (As if I didn't know.) Did you simply recognise it from your reading, as it were, or did you use AI? We used the most sophisticated search engines... (May 12, 2025 at 9:46 am)
- Roger Pulvers on Source? Unpopular Opinions by Dorothy L Sayers, that's the source of the quote. (May 12, 2025 at 7:24 am)
Author Archives: Patrick Miles
A terrific find
Please read Katy George’s and my Comments for the background to this letter, which Katy discovered recently amongst some papers of Mrs Raikes in a charity shop in Deal, Kent. New letters of Kittie Calderon’s are as rare as new … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
Tagged Alexander Pushkin, Captain Charles Evelyn Pym, Downton Abbey, Evey Pym, Evgenii Onegin, Foxwold, George Calderon, Gladys Raikes, Highclere, Johnnie Pym, Katy George, Kittie Calderon, Oxford, Percy Lubbock, St Hilda's Hall, St Petersburg, Tom Raikes, Trinity College Oxford, Violet Pym, William Rothenstein
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22 March 1915
Today, a Monday, Admiral de Robeck, Commander-in-Chief of the British-French fleet at the Dardanelles, and his second-in-command Admiral Wemyss, arrived at Lemnos on their flagship the Queen Elizabeth for a conference with Sir Ian Hamilton, Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force. … Continue reading
Tahiti: The book’s reception (1921)
Katy George’s discovery of Kittie’s letter to Gladys Raikes of 31 March 1923 (see Comments and my post this coming Monday), in which Kittie talks about Percy Lubbock’s ‘Life’ of George, has reminded me that Percy also played a vital … Continue reading
Life with the 9th Ox and Bucks
It is not quite clear from the wording of Kittie’s memoirs whether George had been coming home every weekend from Friday to Monday before starting a ‘machine gunnery course on Hayling Island’, or whether he was able to take such long weekends … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian marriage
Tagged Arthur Maxwell Labouchere, Fort Brockhurst, George Calderon, Hayling Island, Henry Newbolt, Kittie Calderon, Major Benson, Manolo Ordoño de Rosales, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, Peel family, The Great War, William Rothenstein, World War I
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18 March 1915
Just after dawn today, the first ten battleships of de Robeck’s Anglo-French fleet moved off from Tenedos for what it was hoped would be the decisive attack on the Dardanelles, leading to forcing the Narrows on the 19th. De Robeck … Continue reading
15 March 1915: The strain tells
After the naval bombardment at the Dardanelles was suspended on 8 March, the weather worsened but the highly energetic Commodore Roger Keyes was able to make some progress with the minesweeping by replacing trawlermen with Navy volunteers. On 11 March … Continue reading
Tahiti: an imagined world?
It must have taken great self-control for George to concentrate on making a full synopsis of his book Tahiti when he was home on weekend leave, rather than simply keep writing it. But it was certainly the most rational approach. … Continue reading
‘Calderonia’: an update
New followers of the blog deserve an explanation, I feel, of why the last four posts have been purely military and what stage ‘Calderonia’ is at. The main object of the blog is to follow the last year of writer … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged 'real time', biographies, biography, comments, George Calderon, Kittie Calderon, The Great War, World War I
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10 March 1915
Today, Wednesday 10 March, a War Council meeting was held at which Kitchener announced that he would now send his last Regular Army division, the 29th, comprising about 15,000 men, to the Mediterranean to join the forces being despatched from … Continue reading
9 March 1915
Today, the Commander of the East Mediterranean Fleet, Admiral Sackville Carden, suddenly telegraphed the Admiralty that he could do no more to knock out the Intermediate Defences of the Dardanelles until he had received more planes for aerial reconnaissance inland. … Continue reading
8 March 1915
On this day the East Mediterranean Fleet’s bombardment of the shore batteries at the Dardenelles that had begun on 25 February was suspended. It had not gone well. The shelling of the outer forts, from a very safe distance, appeared … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Dardanelles, Gallipoli, Geehl, George Calderon, Kum Kale, Nusrat, Sedd el Bahr, The Great War, World War I
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Who was George Calderon (again)?
I first posted on this subject last year, 13 September. The reason I am touching on it again now is that a follower has very kindly sent me a cutting from the International New York Times of 23 January which is … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Personal commentary
Tagged Albert Murray, Anton Chekhov, Ayana Mathis, biographies, biography, Charles Dickens, Donald Rayfield, Edward Thomas, Ernest J. Simmons, George Calderon, Jane Austen, John Aubrey, Patrick Miles, Ronald Hingley, Rupert Brooke, Ruth Scurr, Siegfried Sassoon, Thomas Mallon, Tom Wolfe, Vita Sackville-West, Wilfred Owen, William Shakespeare
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A biographer in-spires
I have just read a long article by Ruth Scurr, ‘Lives, some briefer than others’, in last Saturday’s Guardian Review (28 February), which I thoroughly recommend to followers if they can get it, along with a piece by Stuart Kelly, ‘Enter … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, biographies, biography, Daniel Defoe, Donald Rayfield, Fort Brockhurst, George Calderon, Helen MacDonald, John Aubrey, Kittie Calderon, Michael Holroyd, Park Honan, Percy Lubbock, Robert Graves, Ruth Scurr, Stuart Kelly, T.S. Eliot, Tahiti, The Brave Little Tailor, TLS, TLS blog
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The biographer perspires
For a few days, I am almost entirely taken up with two smallish but extended projects that have nothing to do with my biography of George Calderon. This is highly frustrating. I tied up chapter 14, which ends with George … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Ashford, biographies, biography, Brighton, comments, Donegal, Elizabeth Ellis, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Kittie Calderon, The Great War, World War I
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Gallipoli: the beginning of the end
Today, 25 March 1915, Field Marshal Otto Liman von Sanders left Constantinople for Gallipoli to take command of the Turkish forces at the Dardanelles. He was not a brilliant Prussian general, but many consider him first-rate. Upon arriving, he said … Continue reading →