Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
George Calderon c.1901
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
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?
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Captain of the 11
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
George Calderon, 1912
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.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
‘Hurtler’ Brangwen, woman in love
Let me explain what lies behind the next three instalments of Calderonia, which are distinguished guest posts taking us up to 8 March and beyond. As part of our lockdown season of old films, Alison and I watched a DVD … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
Tagged Alan Bates, Bildungsroman, biography, comments, D.H. Lawrence, Damian Grant, F.R. Leavis, George Calderon, Glenda Jackson, Gudrun Brangwen, Jennie Linden, John Pym, Ken Russell, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Laurence Brockliss, love, marriage, Penguin Books, Rupert Birkin, The Great War, The Rainbow, Ursula Brangwen, Women in Love, World War I
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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 12
26 September Today I suddenly realised what life under Black Crow reminds me of: living in the Soviet Union. It would be unfair to compare Britain at the moment to the view from a window in Moscow University’s Stalinist hostel … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged advertisements, Andrew Tatham, Bashō, chrysanthemums, comments, coronavirus, COVID-19, dahlias, depression, freedom, garden gnomes, indie publishing, John Dewey, mental health, Moscow, Moscow State University, pandemic, psychosis, Reaktion Books, Rose Tremaine, Sam&Sam, Sam2, self-publishing, Times Literary Supplement, Twigs Way, USSR
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John Baines: exemplar of a young officer
‘Exemplar’, not ‘exemplary’, because John Stanhope Baines, son of the Herbert Stanhope Baines who features in Laurence Brockliss’s recent guest post, would not have wanted anyone to regard him as an exemplary young officer of World War I. When he … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Andrew Baines, Armistice, Austro-Hungary, Baines dynasty, Belgium, British Expeditionary Force, Bulgaria, Dearest Mother, Elisabeth Wicksteed, Elizabeth Baines, Erich Ludendorff, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Germany, Greece, Helion, Herbert Stanhope Baines, Honor Baines, Joanna Palmer, John Baines, Laurence Brockliss, Macedonia, Raphael Kirchner, roadmaking, Royal Engineers, Salonika, Sappers, The Great War, The Leeds Mercury, The Times, Turkey, Winchester College, Windsor Spring Festival, World War I, Ypres
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‘We need each other…’
John Polkinghorne, physicist, priest, Fellow of the Royal Society and Founding President of the International Society for Science and Religion, will be 90 on 16 October. Patrick Miles recently interviewed him by Skype in his care home. Patrick Miles: Our … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged birthdays, care homes, Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Charles Kingsley, Christianity, Church of England, church services, coronavirus, COVID-19, earthquakes, evolution, God, International Society for Science and Religion, Jane Austen, John Polkinghorne, music, New Testament, Origin of Species, pandemic, plate tectonics, Prayer Book, reading, Sam&Sam, science, social work, Templeton Prize, theodicy, theology, viruses, What Can We Hope For?
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Guest Post: Laurence Brockliss, ‘George Calderon and the Demographic Revolution’
George Calderon married Kittie shortly before his thirty-second birthday. For a professional man at the turn of the twentieth century, this was not an uncommon age to wed. For the last ten years I have been leading a cross-generational study … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Aileen Alison Furse, Archie Ripley, Baines dynasty, biographies, birth rate, Cambridge Scool of Historical Demography, Charlotte Talbot, Clara Calderon, Demographic Revolution, Edward Baines Junior, Edward Baines Senior, Edward VII, Elizabeth Graham, George Armand Furse, George Calderon, George Gissing, Gonville and Caius College, grammar schools, Hazel Louisa Furse, Herbert Stanhope Baines, infant mortality, J.A. Banks, Jim Corbet, John William Baines, Kim Philby, Kittie Calderon, Leeds, Leeds Mercury, Liberal Party, marriage, New Grub Street, Nina Astley, Nina Corbet, professional class, prosopography, prostitution, public schools, Sir Roland James Corbet, The Great War, Victorian professions, Wilfred Owen, William Jackson, World War I
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Guest post: Andrew Tatham, ‘A Group Photograph and the Pursuit of Personal History’
If there’s anything to be learned from biography it is that chance meetings can change lives. I first met Patrick Miles next to the warmth of the Aga in my cousin’s kitchen in 2006. I had met many of my … Continue reading
Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged A Group Photograph, Andrew Tatham, art films, Battle of Passchendaele, Belgium, biographies, biography, British Expeditionary Force, Cyril Kingerlee, Elaine Kingerlee, exhibitions, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Gyles Brandreth, history, I Shall Not Be Away Long, Jeremy Vine, John Carey, Keith Simpson MP, Martin Middlebrook, Melvyn Bragg, Norfolk Open Studios, Passchendaele, Patrick Miles, Stephen Lucena, The Great War, William Boyd, World War I, Ypres
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Guest Post: John Pym, ‘The Soldier, the Professor and the Portrait Photographer’
(A reminiscence with Calderonian associations) Once, when I was a boy in the 1950s, my mother led me to a large mansion block in Kensington, West London, so she could introduce me to her last surviving uncle, Hubert Gough, a … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Albert Einstein, Alfred Kerr, Alliance Française, Alphabetical French-English List of Technical Military terms for Military Students, An Ethical System Based on the Laws of Nature, Anne Gough, Bernard Simon, Brigadier-General Sir John Edmond Gough, Charles Gough, Chelsea Home Guard, comments, Constance Cummings, Dardanelles, David Lloyd George, Diana Pym, Dictionary of Difficulties, Erich Ludendorff, Fauquissart, Fifth Army, Gallipoli, General Antoine, General Foch, General Sir Hubert Gough, George Calderon, George Franckenstein, George VI, Gertrud Cohn, Gerty Simon, Hubert Gough, Jack Pym, Jocelyn Herbert, John Pym, Johnnie Gough, Judith Kerr, Käthe Kollwitz, Kenneth Clark, Kittie Calderon, Kurt Weill, Langton Green, Lottle Lenya, Marius Deshumbert, Norman Stone, Passchendaele, Peggy Ashcroft, Sir John Lavery, Soldiering On, Staff College, The Blitz, The Great War, The Wiener Library, Tunbridge Wells, Valentine Gough, Violet Lubbock, Wilhelm Simon, William Rothenstein, World War I
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Fit for purpose, then?
Some of my friends feel that I suffer from Low Frustration Tolerance (‘Foot Stuck on Indignation Pedal’, one calls it). They may be right, but I think Karl Popper would agree with me that you can’t improve the design of … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged accessions, acquisitions, archival management, archives, archivists, British archives, Cambridge University Library, cataloguing, Clare Hopkins, conservation, curation, customer care, fitness for purpose, France, George Calderon, Germany, guest posts, John Pym, Karl Popper, Kittie Calderon, Leeds Russian Archive, Liddell Hart Military Archives, line management, Low Frustration Tolerance, management consultants, Oxbridge college archives, safeguarding, Sandwich, St Petersburg, Sweden, SWOT analysis, Taganrog, The Bodleian Library, The British Library, The Imperial War Museum, The Women's Library Archive, Theatre Museum Collections V&A, Torquay Library, Trinity College Oxford
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‘Spectator’
SAVE IT FOR THE (AMERICAN) NATION! How British archives fail us Patrick Miles It was a biographer’s dream. For decades Russianists had searched in vain for the archive of George Calderon, top Edwardian Slavist and the man who brought Chekhov’s … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
Tagged American archives, Anton Chekhov, archivists, attics, auction houses, bequests, Bernard Quaritch Ltd, Bertram Rota Ltd, biographies, biography, British archives, Cambridge University Library, celebrity, comments, cultural heritage, dilettantism, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Gertrude Bell, Harold Pinter, Harvard University, Jane Austen, Joseph Conrad, Kittie Calderon, learned helplessness, media image, patrimony, PR, research value, Rupert Brooke, The Bodleian Library, The British Library, The Calderon Papers, The Houghton Library, The Spectator, The Watsons, V. Pokrovskii, vultures, Wendy Cope
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Explanatory notes to ‘Thunderer’
I give here some of the facts from my and my team’s experience that lie behind statements I made in the preceding post, whilst preserving the anonymity of most of the offending institutions because I think to name them would … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Aleksandr Anikst, Anglo-Soviet Colloquium 'Chekhov on the British Stage', Anna Sica, Anton Chekhov, archival managers, archive donations, archive sales, Bernard Quaritch Ltd, British archives, Cambridge Modern and Medieval Languages Faculty Library, Cambridge Slavonic Library, Cambridge University Library, cataloguing, Chekhov Centenary Medal, collecting, comments, communication, conservation, customer care, Eleonora Duse, Elizabeth Hill, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Jane Austen, Lucjan Lewitter, Martin Shaw, Mikhail Gorbachev, Murray Edwards College, New Hall, Oleg Efremov, Ray Scrivens, Sotheby's, Special Collections, The Bodleian Library, The Brave Little Tailor, The British Library, The Great War, The Watsons, V. Pokrovskii, William Caine, World War I
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Guest post by John Pym: ‘Women in Love’ and Glenda Jackson’s Oscar
In London in the 1970s and 80s I used to review movies for the British Film Institute’s Monthly Film Bulletin. That serious, no-frills journal, founded in 1934, aimed to cover every feature film released in UK cinemas. Some of the … Continue reading →