Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
George Calderon c.1901
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
George Calderon, 1912
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Captain of the 11
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)Recent Comments
- Stuart Randall on 4 June 1915: The Third Battle of Krithia Thank you so much for putting this online. My great-uncle, Private William Pitt, served with the 4th Btn. Worcestershire Regiment. He was posthumously mentioned in despatches... (May 21, 2025 at 5:29 pm)
- Stephen Rust on Guest post by John Pym: Games Ancient and Modern A wonderful post. John, I've always adored your writings about Merchant Ivory and would love to chat more about them someday. I teach cinema at the University of Oregon,... (May 16, 2025 at 6:45 pm)
- Patrick Miles on Source? Dear Katy, it's lovely to hear from you again! I hope you are well down there in Kent. Would you believe it, I too typed in that first line, as I thought it was perhaps the... (May 12, 2025 at 11:45 am)
- Roger Pulvers on Source? Ah, it is simply a тайна ремесла. But, I assure you, I did not use AI. Please give the book to someone who has not read it and is in your neighbourhood. (May 12, 2025 at 9:57 am)
- Katy George on Source? Pipped to the post! I typed in the first line line of the 2nd paragraph and it came up straight away to the source on Faded Page. (May 12, 2025 at 9:56 am)
Category Archives: Edwardian literature
23 July 1915
British Red Cross and Order of St John Enquiry Department for Wounded and Missing 20, Arlington Street, S.W. July 23 Dear Mrs Calderon, Mr Lubbock telegraphs to us from Alexandria that 6424 Sergt. Smith, K.O.S.B. returning on the hospital ship … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage
Tagged Alexandria, Cecil Sharp, Dardanelles, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Gertrude Bell, Hampstead Conservatoire, Indian Art and Dramatic Society, K.N. Das Gupta, King's Own Scottish Borderers, Kittie Calderon, Martin Harvey, Percy Lubbock, Rabindranath Tagore, Sergeant Smith, The Great War, The Maharani of Arakan, Third Battle of Krithia, World War I
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Katy’s hat trick
Long-term followers of this blog know that Katy George burst onto it back in March, when she came across a perfectly preserved letter of Kittie’s in a charity shop in Deal, Googled on Kittie, found us, and offered the letter … Continue reading
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
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
Tagged Annie Horniman, Dardanelles, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Kittie Calderon, Manchester, Manchester Repertory Company, Percy Lubbock, The Great War, The Manchester Guardian, Third Battle of Krithia, William Caine, World War I, Ypres
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…then three come along at once
When I started my deeper research for this biography in 2010, one of the things I did was trawl the Web for manuscripts of George’s that were up for sale. I found only one item, which we bought for the … Continue reading
4/5 June 1915
The first wave of the KOSB attack at noon on 4 June was, as the Official History put it, ‘practically blotted out’. The carnage was so terrible that on his own initiative their commander delayed the second wave. At 12.35, however, … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged 127th Manchester Brigade, comments, Dardanelles, Final days, Gallipoli, George Calderon, King's Own Scottish Borderers, Krithia, Lieutenant-General Aylmer Hunter-Weston, Manchester Territorial Brigade, Peter Hart, Royal Fusiliers, Royal Naval Division, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Worcestershire Regiment, World War I
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Another eminent Calderon
I picked up The Second I Saw You: The True Love Story of Rupert Brooke and Phyllis Gardner at Waterstones recently and, as I always do with newly published Edwardiana, went straight to the index to see if ‘Calderon’ featured in … Continue reading
The Turkish counter-attack
If the events at Helles on 28 April amount to the First Battle of Krithia, those of 1-4 May deserve to be called the Second. Liman von Sanders’s forces were now overwhelming. He was peremptorily ordered by his War Minister, … Continue reading
George Calderon’s ‘magnum opus’
27 April 1915 was a Tuesday, so George was presumably back at Fort Brockhurst, having returned from weekend leave yesterday. The only other literary work that he may have tinkered with when he was home at weekends was a book … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
Tagged anthropology, comments, Demon Feasts, folklore, Fort Brockhurst, Fritz Epstein, George Calderon, Isabel Fry, James Frazer, Paul Boyer, Percy Lubbock, Simon Franklin, Tahiti, Ted Hughes, The Golden Bough, The Great War, William Blake, World War I
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St George’s Day 1915
This morning the weather in the Aegean was fine and clear. Admiral de Robeck therefore ordered the smaller craft in the harbour of Mudros to move to Tenedos — the first step towards assembling the fleet for landings at Gallipoli … Continue reading
‘The Maharani’: A postscript
Read The Maharani of Arakan yourself to decide whether it is (just) ‘A Romantic Comedy’, as George playfully subtitled it, or a ‘Symbolist Mystery Play’ (allegory)! Having re-read it over the weekend, I increasingly feel it’s the latter. If it is … Continue reading
What is ‘The Lamp’ about? (2)
Presumably George was home again at 42 Well Walk, Hampstead, for the long weekend of 9-12 April 1915, so he may have done more work on leaving various literary projects in a publishable state in case he did not come … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, comments, Ernst Zermelo, Feofan Zatvornik, Geminae, Georg Cantor, George Calderon, La Sainte Courtisane, Lenin, mathematics, Oscar Wilde, Rugby Scool, Russell's Paradox, set theory, The Fountain, The Great War, The Lamp, The Little Stone House, The Two Talismans, World War I
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The Arakan ‘mystery’
The other evening, I met a friend at a party who told me she had recently taken part in a reading of George’s ‘Romantic Comedy in One Act’, The Maharani of Arakan. I was amazed, as I had not heard of … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
Tagged 'real time', biographies, biography, comments, Dardanelles, Fort Brockhurst, Gallipoli, George Calderon, K.N. Das Gupta, Kittie Calderon, Margaret Mitchell, Rabindranath Tagore, Ronald Colman, The Albert Hall, The Coliseum, The Great War, The Maharani of Arakan, William Rothenstein, World War I
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Biography and the limits of non-fiction
I keep dipping into Ruth Scurr’s John Aubrey: My Own Life. It’s very compulsive reading, but I don’t have time at the moment to let it run away with me as I would wish. Nevertheless, I’ve read enough both of the … Continue reading
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 →