George Calderon, 1912
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Captain of the 11
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
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
Frontis piece by Frank CalderonRecent 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
War and woof poetry
Judging by allusions and quotations in his speeches, Volodymyr Zelensky either has a good knowledge of literature himself, or his team does. Unlike Putin, he speaks in a cultured manner, beautifully clearly and expressively, with a literary turn. In an … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Alexander Blok, Alexander Pushkin, Berlin, compromise, dogs, Nazi Germany, Peter Levi, propaganda, Red Army, Robin Milner-Gulland, Russia, Russian poetry, sentimentality, Sergei Yesenin, talant, To Russia's Slanderers, translation, USSR, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vladimir Putin, Volodomyr Zelensky, war poetry, World War 2, Yevgeny Yevtushenko
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A writer-publisher’s Ukrainian diary: 4
23 April 2022 It is St George’s Day, hypothetically William Shakespeare’s birthday, and we are in Stratford-upon-Avon witnessing the civic celebrations, which are beautifully done, inclusive, happy, humorous, almost a Spring flower festival, and a really moving tribute to Shakespeare’s … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Aleksei Gromyko, Aleksei Kozyrev, Alexander Gorchakov, atonement, catacomb Christians, Charles Talleyrand, Chester Wilmot, comments, David Aaronovitch, David Petraeus, General Dvornikov, General Gerasimov, General Mezintsev, Henry VI, Joachim von Ribbentrop, KGB, Khar'kiv, Mariupol, medical diagnoses, military strategy, Moldova, Moscow Patriarchate, Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, NATO, Nikolai Gogol, proxy war, repentance, Rett Syndrome, Russia, Saddam Hussein, salients, Sergei Lavrov, St George's Day, steroids, Stratford-upon-Avon, tank battles, Tariq Aziz, The Donbas, Transnistria, trench warfare, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky, Wagner Group, William Shakespeare, World War 2, World War I
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A Not Nursery Rhyme
DANDLING SONG … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged cats, chub, cockroaches, comments, cowboys, dandling songs, dark blue, folklore, hares, KGB, kikimora, mice, nonsense rhymes, nursery rhymes, oven-prong, poems, pribautki, Rus', Russia, The New Dark Blue Cowboys
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The strange workings of ‘tourbillions of Time’
Long-term followers of Calderonia, and readers of George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, will know that I’m interested in different forms of Time and very fond of the expression ‘tourbillions of Time’ from Robert Graves’s poem ‘On Portents’… Piecing together the narrative behind … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged 'Dandling Song', 'On Portents', aleatory, chronotopes, colours, dark blue, Edward Lear, folklore, George Calderon, Igor' Stravinsky, KGB, Lenin's mausoleum, Margaret Thatcher, naive, nonsense poetry, nursery rhymes, Penguin Russian Course, pribautki, Robert Graves, Russian grammar, Russian language, teaching Russian, The New Dark Blue Cowboys, tourbillions of Time, Valdimir Putin
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A writer-publisher’s Ukrainian diary: 3
11 April 2022 Whilst coming back from the shop with today’s newspaper, I could see a neighbour on the other side of the street who was born at the gates of Mauthausen concentration camp six days before it was liberated … Continue reading
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Tagged 'The Steppe', Anton Chekhov, appeasement, Bellingcat, Bletchley, Cambridge, Crimea, Czechoslovakia, Dnipro, Donbas, Donetsk, FSB, KGB, Mauthausen, Max Hastings, morale, NATO, Nazi Germany, Polonia, Russia, Sergei Beseda, Simferopol, steppeland, tank battles, The Times, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky, Yalta, Yasinovataya, Zhdanov
4 Comments
‘The negation of everything worth living for’
In 2010, when the Putin Project was still just a monocracy and one could converse freely over the phone with friends in Russia, I remarked to one that Russia seemed to have ‘reached about 1892’, i.e. a point during the … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Alexander III, anarchy, Andrei Amal'rik, Angela Merkel, anti-Semitism, apocalypse, autocracy, censorship, Communism, democracy, dogs, Estonia, ideology, irrationalism, Jewish people, Joseph Conrad, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Moscow Patriarchate, Otto von Bismarck, perestroika, Poland, Putin Project, rule of law, satanry, State capitalism, Ukraine, USSR, Vladimir Putin
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A writer-publisher’s Ukrainian diary: 2
5 April 2022 When I contemplated the image from Kyiv that I posted last week, as well as Bruegel I thought of Isaac Babel’s stories Red Cavalry about the Russo-Polish War of 1919-21. Some of that war took place in … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged 'The Prince', Aleksandr Lukashenko, Andrew Tatham, Anton Chekhov, atrocities, Babi Yar, Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Centre, Belarus, Belorussia, Bucha, Chris Deverell, comments, Crimea, David McDuff, Donald Trump, Donbas, EU, Fiona Hill, Georg Trakl, Isaac Babel, Joe Biden, Kyiv, L'viv, Mariupol, Military Intelligence, NATO, Nazis, Niccolo Machiavelli, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Red Cavalry, The Times, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, weapons, World War I, Zbrucz
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A writer-publisher’s Ukrainian diary: 1
16 March 2022 Tony Blair has said that to keep telling Putin all the things we won’t do in the face of Putin’s carnage (e.g. enforce a no-fly zone, give Ukraine Polish MiGs, co-occupy and safeguard Western Ukraine with the … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Alexander Litvinenko, Alexei Navalny, Anna Politkovskaya, Belgium, comments, fear, Iuliia Skripal, Joe Biden, Kaiser Wilhelm II, MiG fighters, peace negotiations, Pityriasis rosea, Roman Abramovich, Sergei Skripal, The Times, Tony Blair, Treaty of London, Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky, World War I
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Bruegel, reality and truth
We all, I imagine, have photographs of terrible events (World War 1, say, the Holocaust, or Hiroshima) indelibly seared on our brains. Where Ukraine 2022 is concerned, the above is the one I shall never forget. The face is straight … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged comments, death, Four Quartets, grief, Hiroshima, Kiev, love, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, reality, Russia, T.S. Eliot, The Holocaust, truth, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, World War I
2 Comments
Only one subject…
For the West, the most shameful part of the Ukrainian War is that if we had stood by the assurances of security that we gave Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 after negotiating the transfer of its nuclear arsenal to … Continue reading
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Tagged Adolf Hitler, Afghan War, Aleksandr Lukashenko, Belorussia, Brest, Budapest Memorandum, Crimean War, Donbas, International Court of Justice, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Kaliningrad, Luhansk, Mariupol, NATO, Nikita Khrushchev, paranoia, Russia, Russo-Japanese War, Stalin, Sudetenland, The Crimea, threats, Ukraine, Ukrainian SSR, Vladimir Putin, Volodomyr Zelensky, vranë, war criminals
7 Comments
Cambridge Tales 4: ‘Sleep and Death’
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Tagged 'Sleep and Death', À la recherche du temps perdu, Aligoté, Apollo, Cambridge Tales, cats, Chablis, college life, Dante, death, Don Quixote, Frances Cornford, J.S. Bach, Marcel Proust, May Week, Meursault, paradise, Pimms, Plato, Professor of French, Professor of Italian, Professor of Spanish, professors, Rupert Brooke, Sancho Panza, wine
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Cambridge Tales 2: ‘His Letter’
He had had the honour of presiding at dessert, where he always drank the accepted minimum. He had entertained some of the guests with his account of the council estate on which he had grown up, and his bedder’s perennial … Continue reading
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Tagged 'His Letter', Alan Cook, Cambridge Tales, college life, college servants, guest hours, sex, short story, students, The Fellowship, The Master, undergraduates
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Cambridge Tales 1: ‘Ghoune’
It was a dark, diluvial, owl-infested night. Despite the glass of Aquavit that he had downed at two in the morning after filling out, checking and re-checking his mark sheets, he tossed and turned in his bed. There was nothing … Continue reading
A writer-publisher’s Ukrainian diary: 5
7 May 2022 People are, I know, frightened by Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons. I have suggested that even western leaders have been sufficiently frightened by these threats to be militarily unproactive. This means that Putin doesn’t need to … Continue reading →