Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
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.
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
George Calderon c.1901
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Captain of the 11
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
George Calderon, 1912Recent 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
Guest post by Damian Grant: ‘Radio Scotland’
We live in France. In Lille, where the language is French. About a year ago — not knowing anything about the animal — I bought a HomePod online. I had thought it was just a superior (and very stylish) kind … Continue reading
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Tagged BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio Scotland, Brexit, chaos theory, classical music, cleaning ladies, comments, Damian Grant, Felix Mendelssohn, Fingal's Cave, France, grandchildren, HomePod, IT, Lille, Madeleine Grant, nursery rhymes, Petroc Trelawney, Scottish Independence, Siri, technology, waste paper baskets
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Christmas in Moscow, 1969
Leningrad, … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged ballet, biographies, biography, Bolshoi Theatre, British Embassy, Brussels sprouts, caviar, Christmas, Christmas Day, comments, coq au vin, George Calderon, Gorki Park, hoarfrost, Leningrad, Maya Plisetskaya, Moscow, Moscow University, Odette, Patrick Miles, prima ballerina assoluta, rime, Russia, skating, Swan Lake
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Mending into…
In my mind’s eye, I can see George Calderon opening this book and chuckling with delight — not just because it was written (and gorgeously illustrated) by a great-granddaughter of his close friend ‘Evey’ Pym, but because it exemplifies something … Continue reading
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Tagged anatomy, Bill Smith, biographies, Celia Pym, chaotic systems, Charles Evelyn Pym, comments, Elizabeth Pym, Evey Pym, evil eye, Fair Isle, George Calderon, Hope Pym, Jim Ivory, Judy Auerbach, jumpers, Kazimir Malevich, knitting, Lara Veitch, Lolu Oluwole-Ojo, mending, Monte Carlo Opera House, moth infestations, murmurations, Piet Mondrian, Pseuds Corner, pullovers, Roland Pym, silk, snowflakes, Suprematism, sweaters, teazles, Treasures from a Ragpile, Victoria & Albert Museum, Vivien Leigh, Women's Home Industries, Wool
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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 19
4 November On its back page, the voluminous weekly DIE ZEIT, which I still think is the best newspaper in Europe, always carries a large photograph of an animal looking at the camera with a distinctive expression, and the caption … Continue reading
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Tagged Adolf Hitler, Alexander Korotko, China, choughs, chrysanthemums, comments, Die Zeit, Edward Lear, emeritus professors, Georg Trakl, haiku, images, Iona, Islay, Kherson, malt whisky, Mexico, Osip Mandel'shtam, peace conferences, professors, Russo-Ukrainian War, soap, soapstone, Sudetenland, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky, war poems, war poetry, whiskies, Winston Churchill
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Was there an ‘Edwardian Age’, and was it ‘great’?
When I began to read George and Kittie Calderon’s archive for my biography of them both, I little thought I would be drawn deeper and deeper into the question of ‘Edwardianism’. Yet I instantly felt as I read George’s letters … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Adrian Gregory, Alison Miles, Bertrand Russell, Carolean Age, Charles III, chauvinism, comments, culturonomics, D.H. Lawrence, Damian Grant, Dardanelles, Diana Princess of Wales, Edward VII, Edwardianism, Elizabeth I, Elizabeth II, Ephraim Parker Oakes, Gallipoli, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, George VI, Georgian Age, H.G. Wells, Henry James, John Pym, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Brockliss, Maria Page, Mesopotamia, New Elizabethan Age, Oliver Moody, Peter Brent, PTSD, Queen Victoria, Robert Baden-Powell, The Great War, Tony Blair, Trinity College Oxford, William Page, World War I, Ypres
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Guest post by John Pym: Games Ancient and Modern
An eight-minute video, La Roue, No. 29, in the series ‘Children’s Games’ by the artist Francis Alÿs: A barefoot boy in a green and yellow football shirt and red shorts – the colours of the Congo national football team – … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged 'Children's Games', A Room with a View, bicycles, Brasted, Brigadier-General Sir John Gough V.C., bumble puppy, card games, Carol Taylor, croquet, E.M. Forster, Etoile copper mine, Evey Pym, Foxwold, Francis Alÿs, Frank Calderon, games, George Calderon, golf, gun cabinet, guns, horses, Hoyle's Rules, Jack Pym, James Ivory, John Pym, Kittie Calderon, La Roue, Lubumbashi, Mahjong, Mampala, Merchant Ivory Productions, Mia Fothergill, Minnie Beebe, play, riding, Roland Pym, Roya Lubbock, Ruth Jhabvala, shooting, Simon Callow, Sir Edmund Backhouse, The Congo, The Great War, The Sacred Lake, tricycle, Up Jenkins, Venice Biennale, Violet Pym, Windy Corner, World War I
1 Comment
Mayakovsky’s pancake
It may seem surprising that I can bring myself to say anything positive about Russians at a time when their country has become, to quote Joseph Conrad again, ‘the negation of everything worth living for’. But, of course, these four … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Aleksei Suvorin, Alfred Dreyfus, anecdotes, Anton Chekhov, Anton Chekhov: A Short Life, biographies, comments, Dreyfus Affair, Lev Trotsky, literary anecdotes, Literature and Revolution, love, love at first sight, Mikhail Pavlovich Chekhov, Narkom, pancakes, parallel lines, People's Commissar, proverbs, Shrove Tuesday, Shrovetide, steppe, Vladimir Mayakovsky
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Guest post by Alison Miles: Edwardian grandmothers?
Both my grandmothers were children during the reign of Edward VII. My paternal grandmother Dorothy Mabel Angus (Granny Thomas) was born on 2 December 1897 and my maternal grandmother Eleanor Frances Ashton (Granny Goodfield) on 7 April 1898. Granny Thomas … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian marriage, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Africa, Arras, Arts and Crafts, Ashton Family, Battle of Arras, British Empire, Cardiff, Cardiff University, class system, comments, David Ashotn, Dorothy Mabel Angus, education, Edwardian furnishings, Edwardian furniture, Edwardian homes, Edwardian period, Eleanor Frances Ashton, family photographs, Franz Schubert, grandparents, housework, India, John Mortimer Angus, Ludwig van Beethoven, meningitis, missionaries, music-making, nannies, Norman Angus, Received Pronunciation, servants, snobbery, social mobility, social status, souvenirs, The Great War, Thomas Family, Victorian period, World War I
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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 21
7 January Almost themed, one could say, in Calderonia, Cambridge academic Ruth Scurr has written a meaty review in today’s Spectator of Claire Harman’s experiment in biography All Sorts of Lives: Katherine Mansfield and the Art of Risking Everything. Anyone who writes … Continue reading →