Category Archives: Edwardian character

Watch this Space

Calderonia is an experiment in biography through a blog. It tells the story of George and Kittie Calderon’s lives from 30 July 1914 to 30 July 1915 from day to day as it happened, but exactly 100 years afterwards. It therefore … Continue reading

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The Brave Little Tailor

7/5/16. The good news is that I have finished my fundamental revision of the biography. It can rest for a few weeks until I give it the final slow, close read. I turn now to writing the Introduction. These things … Continue reading

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Watch this Space

27/4/16. By the time you read this, I shall either be poring over George Calderon’s uncatalogued manuscript (typescript?) of The Brave Little Tailor and Kittie’s letters to Laurence Binyon at the British Library, or I shall have done so, in which … Continue reading

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Watch this Space

20/4/16. Several people have asked me about late photographs of Kittie. Here is the last one I know of. It was not easy to date. Triangulating from the probable year of Cairn terrier Bunty’s birth (1922), the dog’s known longevity, … Continue reading

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Watch this Space

31/7/15. Blogged out, I am chilling out — slightly. I’m particularly interested in the reception of Patrick Marber’s stunning play THREE DAYS IN THE COUNTRY at the National Theatre, as it is based on my literal translation of Turgenev’s A MONTH IN … Continue reading

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The War

Im Westen nichts Neues is the title of Erich Maria Remarque’s famous novel, usually rendered in English as All Quiet on the Western Front. Its literal translation, however, is In the West Nothing New. The deadly sniping, sapping, night raids, shelling … Continue reading

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25 July 1915

Today Kittie received a long letter from the Liberal historian, journalist and political advisor John Lawrence Le Breton Hammond (usually known as Lawrence Hammond). I cannot reproduce it, because it is still in copyright, but I will précis it and … Continue reading

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REVIEW. Lorna C. Beckett, The Second I Saw You: The True Love Story of Rupert Brooke and Phyllis Gardner (British Library, 2015), 208 pp.

The chance sight of an email that I sent my military research assistant on 22 July 2014 recalls me with a start to the fact that I began researching the last year of George Calderon’s life exactly a year ago! … Continue reading

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Flashback — and tourbillions in Time (again)

The Imperial War Museum invited me to contribute a post to their Research Blog, and I promptly accepted. I am not, of course, a military historian, and when I started researching the last ten months of George’s life I was … Continue reading

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De-appled

With less than a fortnight before the blog closes, I would like to tie up as many loose ends as possible. But, of course, people’s lives aren’t like that… One end, however, that has suddenly been almost tied up is … Continue reading

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14 July 1915: Very great concern

The War Office, working with the Red Cross, had established that George was not amongst the wounded or deceased at any point along their lines of medical communication between Gallipoli and Alexandria-Malta-Blighty, hence their telegram to Kittie of 12 July … Continue reading

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A friend’s published tribute

As I explained in my post of 25 June, after George’s death was officially accepted in the spring of 1919 Kittie invited his friends to write their memoirs of him, which of course included tributes, but none of these was … Continue reading

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Commemoration (to be concluded)

Mr Pym, who is the grandson of Violet and Evey Pym, of Foxwold, two of the Calderons’ closest friends, sent me this poem a fortnight before the anniversary of George Calderon’s death. He was not able to take part in … Continue reading

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Gallipoli: planning a disaster

The Third Battle of Krithia, in which George Calderon was killed on 4 June, may have been the bloodiest single battle fought by the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force at Gallipoli, i.e. in terms of its own losses. Enemy losses, both in … Continue reading

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Action

Both Constance Sutton (Astley) and Nina Corbet (Astley) knew only too well the nervous and physical effects that anxiety tended to have on Kittie. But Kittie had her own well-developed pattern of techniques for coping with it. She clung to … Continue reading

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George Calderon: a tribute

As I have written before, the question everyone asks me is: ‘Who is George Calderon?’ Perhaps unconsciously, some people seem to intonate this as a rhetorical question implying: ‘Why are you spending years of your life writing about a person … Continue reading

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