Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Captain of the 11
George Calderon, 1912
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
George Calderon c.1901
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
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?
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913Recent 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
Health Warning
I have decided I must go public about the nine years of frustration that the owner of the Calderon Papers and I endured as we tried to find a permanent home for them in a British archival institution. It was … Continue reading
Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged 'Thunderer', archival management, archive donations, archive sales, archives, biography, British archives, Calderon Family Papers, Cambridge, cataloguing, comments, communication, conservation, customer care, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Harvard University, Kittie Calderon, The Spectator, The Times
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‘People are reading an awful lot…
…and many booksellers are doing mail order,’ writes Susan Hill in The Spectator. I should say they are! Click the prompt at the bottom of this post to buy my blockbuster biography from Sam&Sam while stocks last! Obsessed with self-image, … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged activism, Anna Karenina, Anton Chekhov, biographies, British Expeditionary Force, Dardanelles, Edward VII, Gallipoli, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Kittie Calderon, Middlemarch, New Drama, Nina Corbet, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, polymathery, portfolio career, publicity, Russia, Sam&Sam, self-isolation, Susan Hill, Tahiti, The Edwardians, The Great War, The Spectator, Third Battle of Krithia, Times Literary Supplement, World War I, Ypres
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Weighty Calderonian matters
The above is described in an auction catalogue of 2001 as ‘A Victorian set of jockey scales by Youngs of Bear Street, London WC on oak stand with spiral-turned supports. Width 3ft’. The auction in question was of ‘The Residual Contents … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
Tagged A Room with a View, Anstey Guthrie, biographies, biography, body weight, Boulogne, Catherine Lubbock, Charles Evelyn Pym, Christopher Tebb, comments, Daniel Day Lewis, Dr Albert Tebb, E.M. Forster, Emmetts, Foxwold, Frederic Lubbock, George Calderon, height, Horace Pym, John Pym, Kittie Calderon, R. Ruthven Pym, Violet Pym, visitors books, weighing machine, weighing machines, Windy Corner
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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 8
13 March Within seven hours of my last post going up, the organisers of the 2020 conference of the British Association of Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES) emailed everyone to say they were calling it off. Only an hour … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Archie Brown, BASEES, BASEES Conference, Black Crow, coronavirus, COVID-19, democracy, Edmund Burke, George Eliot, Marcel Proust, Matthew Paris, Middlemarch, Mikhail Gorbachev, newspapers, parliamentarianism, philosophy, quarantine, Rodric Braithwaite, Sam&Sam, self-isolation, Sergei Esenin, The Spectator, The Times
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Bloggering on!
It is such a long time since I blogged, that followers would be excused for forgetting why the previous post has been up for five weeks. The reason is that we have been preparing for Sam&Sam’s Moscow-Cambridge stall at the … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged BASEES Conference, biographies, comments, coronavirus, COVID-19, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Harvey Pitcher, John Polkinghorne, marketing, Moscow, pandemics, publishing, Robinson College, Russianists, sales, Sam&Sam, Slavists, What Can We Hope For?
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Guest Post: John Pym on the film ‘1917’
In my humble opinion, one shouldn’t read too much into 1917 , which is, essentially, a ‘mission movie’ (the mission in this case being to deliver a letter and avert a doomed attack). The mission is very nearly ‘impossible’, and the … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged '1917', American Civil War, Brigadier-General Sir John Gough V.C., Captain Charles Evelyn Pym, commemoration, comments, D.W. Griffiths, films, General Sir Hubert Gough, George Calderon, John Pym, Kittie Calderon, messengers, mission films, production design, reviews, Sam Mendes, The Birth of a Nation, The Great War, trenches, Violet Lubbock, war films, World War I
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Resolution
A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL OUR SUBSCRIBERS, OTHER FOLLOWERS, AND CASUAL VISITORS! 2019 was a good year for Calderonia, with a slight increase in views despite the fact that the book has now been out for sixteen months. … Continue reading
From the diary of a writer-publisher: 6
6 December Our post office is inside the local supermarket, and next to the queue is a stand with all the British newspapers. In an Orwellian spirit of studying what people across the whole political spectrum are thinking, I occasionally … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged agnosticism, Amazon, And now the coffin has been lowered, biographies, biography, birds, Calderonia, death, East-West Review, eschatology, Fedor Tiutchev, Four Funerals and a Tyutchev Poem, I grob opushchen uz v mogilu, John Dewey, Labour Party, Lutheranism, Mirror of the Soul: A Life of the Poet Tyutchev, Morning Star, obituary, Protestantism, Russianists, self-publishing, translation
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Christmas in St Petersburg, 1895
St Petersburg, 27 December 1895 (N.S.) English Christmas Evening I spent at the Wildings: of the guests were Mr and Mrs Alfred Whishaw, Dick Whishaw (18) and Miss blank Whishaw (say 19); James Whishaw (V.C., not the cross but Vice … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
Tagged Alfred Whishaw, charades, Charlie Fletcher, Christmas, Clumps, Dick Whishaw, Francke family, George Calderon, icehills, James Whishaw, Julian Calendar, methylated spirits, Miss Whishaw, Mrs Alfred Whishaw, Philip Hermogenes Calderon, plum pudding, skating, St Petersburg, Trinity College Oxford, Turkey, Wylie family
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A signing
Alison baked a perfect Victoria sponge and last Wednesday we took it along for tea with John Polkinghorne and his carer. He likes a nice cake (foregrounded in the photograph below). The five of us had a very lively conversation … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Alison Miles, Amazon, book launch, Jim Miles, John Polkinghorne, sales, Sam&Sam, Sam2, signing, tea, typesetting, Victoria sponge, What Can We Hope For?
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Guest Post: Alison Miles on ‘What Can We Hope For?’ from the edge of the epicentre
John Polkinghorne lives near us and we have known him for many years. In 2015 the Church Times published an interview in which he answered questions about science and religion put to him by my husband, Patrick. It celebrated John’s … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Alison Miles, Amazon, Amazon UK, Clays of Bungay, cosmology, cover designs, Dialogues about the Future, editing, eschatology, James Miles, Johannes Gutenberg, John Polkinghorne, Kettle's Yard, mathematical physics, Naum Gabo, Patrick Miles, philosophy, Poland, print on demand, proofs, religion, Sam&Sam, science, The Church Times, theology, transcription, voice recording, What Can We Hope For?
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And the exhibition?
The actual exhibition The Rising Tide: Women at Cambridge is one of the best I have seen at the University Library in fifty years. Subsequent to my experience of the PR, I have visited it twice, spending a total of an … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian marriage, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Agnata Ramsay, Behave Badly, Cambridge University Library, Chrystabel Proctor, Clare College, degrees for women, Elizabeth Hughes, Emily Davies, Emma Thompson, Emmeline Pankhurst, George Calderon, Germaine Greer, Girton College, Joanna Womack, lavatory paper, marketing, Men's League for Opposing Woman Suffrage, Millicent Fawcett, National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, Newnham College, Philip Snowden, PR, Queen Anne, Sandi Toksvig, suffragettism, suffragism, The Rising Tide: Women at Cambridge, Votes for Women, Women's Social and Political Union
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‘Thunderer’
Curate your own stuff – British archives can’t cope PATRICK MILES Thinking of depositing your family papers in a public archive? Be prepared for nobody to answer your emails, promises to be broken, cataloguing never to happen, and to discover … Continue reading →