Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
George Calderon, 1912
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Captain of the 11
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
George Calderon c.1901Recent 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)
Category Archives: Personal commentary
‘Library Notes’ (4)
This is the penultimate in my series of posts about books that have been in my Russian library — which is going to a bibliophile in the States — for years, but which I had never read. As soon as … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Anna Akhmatova, bereavement, Bolsheviks, cannibalism, Catherine Merridale, commemoration, comments, Communism, death, E.H. Carr, famine, genocide, grieving, Holodomor, Joseph Stalin, Lenin's mausoleum, memory, Norman Stone, PTSD, Russia, Soviet history, The Great Terror, USSR, Vladimir Putin, Yezhovshchina
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The diary of a writer-publisher: 40
1 July 2026 I attend an uncostumed run-through of the RSC Cherry Orchard (previews open in nine days time and the press night is 21st). Met at the stage door of the Swan by the company SM, who makes a … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Amazon, Anton Chekhov, Arden Hotel, atheism, Bill Pullman, Cheshire Cat, cover designs, Elizabeth Freestone, F.M. Dostoevsky, Firs, G.M. Livshits, Helen Hunt, James Miles, Kenneth Branagh, Laura Wade, Lopakhin, Melikhovo, Mikhail Bakhtin, mimicry, Royal Shakespeare Company, RSC, run-throughs, sakura, Stratford-upon-Avon, Swan Theatre, Tamara Harvey, The Cherry Orchard, The Goathead Press, The White Bow/Ghoune, translation, versions, Yepikhodov
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‘Library Notes’ (3)
Yes, I know… Both the title and uniform of this Soviet book are so forbidding that I am hardly surprised I never read it when I bought it (1986) and did not recognise it recently when cataloguing my Russian library … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged A.V. Lunacharskii, atheism, Bolshevik power, Communism, conversion of Rus', Dead Sea Scrolls, E.M. Iaroslavskii, G.M. Livshits, Iosif Amusin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Millenium of Christianity in Russia, N.K. Krupskaia, Qumran community, religions, religious cults, Russian Orthodox Church, scientific atheism, Sergei Bychkov, USSR, zhdanovshchina
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‘Library Notes’ (2)
This children’s book of 79 lines of poetry was stuck on its side behind the Brodsky section of my library (six books published between 1967 and 1993). I’d completely forgotten its existence — although it was clearly inscribed by me … Continue reading
Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary, Uncategorized
Tagged Alexander Pushkin, Anton Chekhov, ballads, censorship, children's literature, comments, Constantine Cafavy, Edward Lear, fairytales, Joseph Brodsky, Kornei Chukovskii, Leningrad, Lewis Carroll, Metropol Hotel, nonsense poetry, nursery rhymes, The Little Tugboat, USSR, Viktor Tauber, Z. Arshakuni
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The diary of a writer-publisher: 39
20 May 2026 A thirty-five minute phone call from Tamara Harvey, who is directing the RSC production of The Cherry Orchard, which plays at Stratford from 10 July to 29 August. Tamara wanted to check pronunciation of the Russian names in … Continue reading
Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Amazon, Anton Chekhov, Crimea, Kenneth Branagh, King Charles III, Lopakhin, Meldrewism, patronymics, Ranyevskaya, Richard Eyre, RSC, Russian names, Russo-Ukrainian War, Tamara Harvey, telecons, The Cherry Orchard, The Tempest, The White Bow/Ghoune, Trofimov, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin
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The diary of a writer-publisher: 38
21 April 2026 A one-to-one meeting in the RSC theatre at Stratford with Tamara Harvey, Co-Artistic Director. In October I had printed out from the RSC website the two-page publicity for her production of The Cherry Orchard in the Swan Theatre … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Cambridge University, Goat1, Goat2, Gonville & Caius College, Helen Hunt, impostors, J.H. Prynne, Kenneth Branagh, Laura Wade, Mikhail Kuz'min, Moscow Patriarchate, NT, Peter Hall, Roman Catholic Church, RSC, Tamara Harvey, The Cherry Orchard, The Goathead Press, The Times, The White Bow/Ghoune
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The Europeans 2019
Pull on your driving gloves, Gordon, Light up your Billiard pipe! Edge out and I’ll slam shut the garage, We’re off to the civilized life! In two hours we’ll be down at Dover, This Bentley’s not going near Fife! Cher Bertrand, chère … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Bermuda shorts, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Cagnes, Cap Gris Nez, comments, Dover, EU, Europeans, Fife, France, gravy, Great Britain, hedonism, How To Get On In Society, John Betjeman, Melissa & Gordon, oikophobia, Paris, pipes, socca, Venice
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The essential Oxford novel
As Calderonians know, there were two wildly popular novels about Oxford University in the nineteenth century: Cuthbert Bede’s The Adventures of Mr Verdant Green (1853) and George’s The Adventures of Downy V. Green, Rhodes Scholar at Oxford (1902). They have … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged C.P. Snow, Cambridge University, campus novels, Cuthbert Bede, Dead Souls, Don Quixote, Dorothy Sayers, F.T. Unwin, feminism, George Calderon, Hamlet, Horace Hare, J.P. Stern, John Milton, M.R. James, Mary-Jo Poltowa, Moll Flanders, Morton Pinkney, Niccolo Machiavelli, Nikolai Gogol, Oxford University, Penfold Huddlestone, picaresque novels, satire, St Jocasta's College, The Adventures of Downy V. Green, The Adventures of Mr Verdant Green, The Good Soldier Švejk, Tom Sharpe, Voltaire
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Joseph Brodsky: A Christmas poem
They didn’t care about the desert that lay all around, or the blizzard that wrapped them in ghoulish sounds, or how cramped it was in a shepherd’s hut; that from all other spaces the world pushed them out. For, firstly, … Continue reading
Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged blizzard, Christmas poems, desert, Giotto di Bondone, Jesus Christ, Joseph Brodsky, poetry, refugees, Russian poetry, Space, St Joseph, Star of Bethlehem, stars, The Child, The Flight into Egypt, The Nativity, The Virgin Mary, verse translation
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The diary of a writer-publisher: 35
13 October 2025 There were a number of letters in The Times earlier this month describing butterflies that the authors had witnessed turning up at funerals and even settling on the coffin. The point was that people found it mysterious and strangely … Continue reading
Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged affectionate forms, Amazon, animism, Anton Chekhov, Badenweiler, butterflies, Coalition of the Willing, defeatism, diminutive forms, Donald Trump, economic sanctions, EU, funerals, John Polkinghorne, Joseph Brodsky, moths, Ol'ga Knipper, peace process, publication dates, quails, Roger Boyes, Russia, Rustem Umerov, seagulls, second presence, Steve Witkoff, The Goathead Press, The Seagull, The Times, The White Bow/Ghoune, translation, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Washington, What Can We Hope For?
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Goathead is launched
Dear Subscribers to Calderonia, The Anglo-Russian publisher Sam&Sam, which was founded in Moscow in 1974 and published George Calderon: Edwardian Genius in Britain in 2018, has now been divided into Sam&Sam owned and based exclusively in Russia, and The Goathead Press … Continue reading
Announcing: THE GOATHEAD PRESS
On 16 June this year the website www.samandsam.co.uk, which had existed since 2018, disappeared from the Web. Here is a reminder of what the splash page looked like: I refused to waste much time over who had perpetrated this, because … Continue reading
Joseph Brodsky: ‘October madrigal’
No stuffed gull on our mantelpiece but a darling quail. Grandfather ticking at his pace soothes each evening our battered drums. Outside, the tree is a candle with the glums. Four days now sea has pounded on its wall. Lay … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged blondes, eardrums, grandfather clocks, Joseph Brodsky, needles, October madrigal, poetry in translation, quail, Russian poetry, sea, sea walls, seagulls, sewing, tanka, translation
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‘Library Notes’ (5)
Anyone learning Russian surely has only to see the word for apple, yabloko, to remember it forever, because it contains three round letters that look just like rolling apples. The word is an apple! I think Russians like the word, too. There … Continue reading →