Category Archives: Personal commentary

28 July 1917: A letter to Mrs Calderon

July 28th 1917                                    Havelock Barracks,  Lucknow, India … we are having some terrible weather out hear, its never stop raining for five days, … Continue reading

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Decisions decisions

The most gratifying thing about the whole process of finding the right publisher for my biography of George, which has been going on since January, has been the enthusiasm so many publishers have shown for George himself and his story. … Continue reading

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Plum pie in the sky

I was intending to post about this subject in February, but my attention wandered and the relevant newspaper cuttings got buried. I am very glad that I put it off, as I have now read this recently reprinted book, which … Continue reading

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Punching on

The campaign to publish continues to develop in unpredictable ways. I have lost three publishers, through no fault of their own. One of them does no real marketing, but saddest of all is the fact that Giles de la Mare, … Continue reading

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The Petersfield parenthesis

Happy the person who can combine work with a holiday in a lovely place. Definitely in need of such a break, we spent four days in the Petersfield area of Hampshire at the beginning of the month. We had not … Continue reading

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Publication: the state of play

Contrary to my original dread, I can’t possibly claim that the process of approaching commercial publishers has been dull and predictable… I explained my strategy in a post on 18 January. I had just sent the advance party out and … Continue reading

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Fragment of Kittie

Life once more whisked me away from the Sussex Downs — they had made me learn a lot about England & these Islands all of them each in there [sic] particular way – Ireland – Scotland – England – – and yes … Continue reading

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A slight hitch, aaargh!

I fell in love with this picture the moment I saw it in 2012: I had come across it on the website for the National Trust’s property of Emmetts in Kent. It is no longer available there, but actually it … Continue reading

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A skipped life

For my taste, this book is the most innovative biography since Ruth Scurr’s John Aubrey: My Own Life (see 15 October 2016). Although reviewed positively when it appeared last year, it is so original that I defy anyone to get their head quite round … Continue reading

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Empires end like this…

There are two reasons that obtaining Permissions has taken so long, in my case at least (see 17 April and 20 April). First, although I rapidly earmarked the sixteen ‘major’ sources of quoted unpublished material in my biography, e.g. William Rothenstein, … Continue reading

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‘All shall be well’ really?

The text of my biography is now as ready, I think, as it’s ever going to be, my approaches to publishers are roughly on course, but I am far behind with my Permissions, and that means with writing my voluminous … Continue reading

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Letter to a publisher

Not surprisingly, I suppose, at my time of life I feel more confident about tackling publishers with a proposal than I have before. I know more about the publishers out there and the books they are producing, I understand better … Continue reading

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Guest post: Laurence Brockliss, ‘Journalists in Victorian and Edwardian Britain’

George Calderon was a playwright, essayist and translator as well as a journalist. There was nothing unusual in this as journalism before the First World War did not exist as a distinctive career. In 1911 individuals who described themselves as … Continue reading

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The U.K./E.U. copyright chimaera: a postscript

Following my last post, I began to wonder if, after all, I hadn’t overdone it. But I soon received a number of emails approving of my copyright ‘polemic’, ‘evisceration’, ‘logical deconstruction’, as they called it. From details in these emails, … Continue reading

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The triumph of…what?

Given that my post about George’s 1913 visit to Madeira was up for over a fortnight, that Alison’s guest post (which was another in the ‘new biographies’ series) has been up for ten days, and on 21 April Laurence Brockliss’s … Continue reading

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Guest post: Alison Miles, ‘A Dangerous Innocence’

The title of Artemis Cooper’s biography of Elizabeth Jane Howard (John Murray, 2016) certainly gives a clue to what lay behind Howard’s life. Jane (as she was known) developed childhood insecurities that appear to have stemmed from her need for … Continue reading

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