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 Ninette…we made it…
what fresh fruits de mer on your terrace
au Cap…do take a photograph, dear.
First in Paris: my hair! Then L’Alceste
with escargots…the waiters are charming…
raise your glass, dear, I’ll snap you together.
Melissa goes topless at Cagnes.
O quelle compagnie for the socca!
Let’s raise our rosé to la France!
It’s a quick flight to Marco. We’ll wear
our new blue Bermudas and soak up
the sunsets through chilled pink Bellinis…
Ugh! Why must we always go ‘home’?
He kicked their old Bentley, clenched pipe,
and they crawled through the boneyard of Europe
back to Brexit, and Bojo, and gravy.
© Patrick Miles, 2026
For the context to these verses, see here.
Socca is a speciality of the Nice area.
ADVERTISEMENT
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.
Related
George Calderon c.1901
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
George Calderon, 1912
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Captain of the 11
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
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 Ninette…we made it…
what fresh fruits de mer on your terrace
au Cap…do take a photograph, dear.
First in Paris: my hair! Then L’Alceste
with escargots…the waiters are charming…
raise your glass, dear, I’ll snap you together.
Melissa goes topless at Cagnes.
O quelle compagnie for the socca!
Let’s raise our rosé to la France!
It’s a quick flight to Marco. We’ll wear
our new blue Bermudas and soak up
the sunsets through chilled pink Bellinis…
Ugh! Why must we always go ‘home’?
He kicked their old Bentley, clenched pipe,
and they crawled through the boneyard of Europe
back to Brexit, and Bojo, and gravy.
© Patrick Miles, 2026
For the context to these verses, see here.
Socca is a speciality of the Nice area.
ADVERTISEMENT
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.
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