Bloggering on!

Dress rehearsal for our stall

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 2020 conference of the British Association of Slavonic and East European Studies, 3-5 April at Robinson College, Cambridge, and as part of the campaign for that we decided to put up a comprehensive statement about the book until after Easter.

Every Monday for eight weeks I was getting things together for our stall, from the Russian books (17 titles) and their correct pricing, the English-language books (5 titles), acrylic book stands, a drape with our logo, and the right-sized screens, to posters for these screens, captions for the displays, an iZettle widget for card payments, advertisements, blurbs, book lists and a cash bag. Meanwhile, my Russian publishing partner, with whom I founded Sam&Sam in 1974, has had his time cut out using my official invitation to buy a visa ($300) and plane tickets.

Finally, a fortnight ago, it was all ready for the 500+ delegates.  Then along came the Virus, or as I call prefer to call it CORVID-19 — Black Crow…

At the time of writing, both here in Cambridge and there in a village outside Moscow, we are still hoping and expecting to take part in the Conference and sell lots of books. However, in case it doesn’t happen, I just wanted to squeeze into Calderonia and Twitter a photographic testimony to the fact that we were ready to go!

Watch this space, then. I was quite looking forward to resuming blogging after Easter, but it may now be sooner than that. I think I’ve got a few juicy themes in store. If this year’s BASEES conference is cancelled, Sam&Sam will attend the next one in Cambridge in 2022.

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George Calderon: Edwardian Genius Front Cover

SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS 

‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement

‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’  Michael Pursglove, East-West Review

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer

‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.

Click here to purchase my book.

 

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