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 the play, which is a complex subject. Fortunately I have long experience of them, so could explain such things as patronymics being contracted in speech, what happens to the stress when forename and patronymic are run together, names like Kozoedov (‘Goat-eater’), and why Dunyasha addresses Firs with his full form Firs Nikolayevich. Tamara had got pronunciations off the Web, but wanted to verify them live. She repeated the correct versions to me and, as one might expect, has a very good ear. I was so impressed by the meticulousness with which she approached this nightmare subject that I simply had to say at the end how wonderful it was to be able to talk frankly like this after my initial Meldrewism. ‘Oh yes, Patrick, we know that you will always be frank!’. Tamara is a master of the exit line.
22 May
Tamara Harvey rings, this time to discuss certain emotional-sexual issues with characters in The Cherry Orchard. Is Yasha really Ranyevskaya’s gigolo? Does what Ranyevskaya says in her key scene with Trofimov in Act 3 reveal a more than matronly interest in him? Fortunately, I have heard and read many Russian directors’ and Chekhov scholars’ views on these questions over the years, so I have a clutch of strong negative answers. In the course of discussing them, we visit all sorts of interesting areas and where Trofimov’s lovelessness is concerned I even find myself quoting Simon Baron-Cohen on psychopathery. A fairly clinching factor is whether characters address each other as ty (tu) or Vy (vous), since the first may imply sexual relations. But whether Lopakhin is ‘in love’ with Ranyevskaya, as about 25% of Russian theatre directors seem to believe, is a more nuanced subject. The play practically opens with his reverie on what a ‘good person’ she is, ‘easy to get on with’; how kind she was when his peasant father punched him in the face, blood poured from his nose, and ‘she took me to a washbasin in this very room, the nursery’, and said to him ‘Don’t cry, little peasant, it’ll heal in time for your wedding’. He was then fifteen and she about twenty-two, ‘very young still, so slim’… I think it’s quite possible he conceived a ‘limerence’ for her as psychologists today call it, or ‘crush’ in theatre parlance, and it’s lasted twenty years. Some theatre directors may well be right in thinking this is why he is so deeply pleased to be able to give her a ‘way out’ of selling her dear orchard, and prefaces it with ‘I love you as one of my own…more than one of my own’. Crushes may last twenty minutes or twenty years, but without reciprocity they can die in a nanosecond. We had now been discussing for over an hour. I apologised, but Tamara then put two killer prepared questions: what, in my opinion, is The Cherry Orchard about, and what would I advise her to avoid at all costs? I was stunned. (She apologised for the frankness of these questions!) But I was able to give my answers, we carried on talking for another fifteen minutes, and she said she found the conversation ‘a joy’. I can’t say I have ever known a theatre director say that to me before. Three hours later in Stratford she was welcoming the King to a performance of The Tempest directed by Richard Eyre. As Alison pointed out, by then Tamara had had plenty of experience of ‘talking to an old buffer’. Photo: https://www.rsc.org.uk/news/a-visit-from-our-patron-his-majesty-the-king (we wanted to rehost the image in that article, which is terrific, but on this occasion the copyright was a little tight so we recommend clicking that link to see text and pictures).
28 May
The RSC has announced the full cast of its Cherry Orchard in a version by Laura Wade directed by Tamara Harvey. It looks simply lovely. Of course, I have not heard of some of the younger actors before, indeed some of them are appearing with the RSC for the first time, but they look vibrant and physically well cast. The central roles are in the hands of incredibly skilled actors, including Kenneth Branagh as Lopakhin. Altogether, it strikes me as perhaps the strongest cast assembled for an English Cherry Orchard since the 1960s. I have hopes of a great and possibly mould-breaking production. It is sold out.
10 June
There’s no doubt in my mind that the attempted annexation of Ukraine has entered its endgame. More Russian soldiers have been killed than British soldiers were in the whole of World War 2. Putin’s popularity is dented. Russia’s economy is nearing breaking point. The Ukrainians are gaining territory. Conditions are becoming favourable for retaking Crimea. But how long will the endgame last and how will it end? Although the Ukrainians are winning on the ground, in desperation Putin has stepped up his deadly missile bombardment. If I have got his psychology right, he will not give in but commit more and more desperate acts, blame everyone else for his failure, destroy his country, and end up in a bunker. Some believe that if he negotiated, carried on as dictator, and escaped the ICC for his war crimes, that would actually be a worse outcome for Russia and the world.
18 June
Subscribers ask me when my book of stories The White Bow/Ghoune is coming out. You are quite right to ask, and I do apologise for not addressing the subject earlier. We are still waiting for the first proofs from Amazon, over a month after submitting our own final typeset text. The delay is unprecedented and we have no way of discovering what is behind it. However, Plans B and C exist and we ourselves are proceeding as fast as possible. The book is likely to be 245 pages, the longest Amazon will have printed for us (we hope!).
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
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
George Calderon, 1912
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
George Calderon c.1901
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Captain of the 11
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
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 the play, which is a complex subject. Fortunately I have long experience of them, so could explain such things as patronymics being contracted in speech, what happens to the stress when forename and patronymic are run together, names like Kozoedov (‘Goat-eater’), and why Dunyasha addresses Firs with his full form Firs Nikolayevich. Tamara had got pronunciations off the Web, but wanted to verify them live. She repeated the correct versions to me and, as one might expect, has a very good ear. I was so impressed by the meticulousness with which she approached this nightmare subject that I simply had to say at the end how wonderful it was to be able to talk frankly like this after my initial Meldrewism. ‘Oh yes, Patrick, we know that you will always be frank!’. Tamara is a master of the exit line.
22 May
Tamara Harvey rings, this time to discuss certain emotional-sexual issues with characters in The Cherry Orchard. Is Yasha really Ranyevskaya’s gigolo? Does what Ranyevskaya says in her key scene with Trofimov in Act 3 reveal a more than matronly interest in him? Fortunately, I have heard and read many Russian directors’ and Chekhov scholars’ views on these questions over the years, so I have a clutch of strong negative answers. In the course of discussing them, we visit all sorts of interesting areas and where Trofimov’s lovelessness is concerned I even find myself quoting Simon Baron-Cohen on psychopathery. A fairly clinching factor is whether characters address each other as ty (tu) or Vy (vous), since the first may imply sexual relations. But whether Lopakhin is ‘in love’ with Ranyevskaya, as about 25% of Russian theatre directors seem to believe, is a more nuanced subject. The play practically opens with his reverie on what a ‘good person’ she is, ‘easy to get on with’; how kind she was when his peasant father punched him in the face, blood poured from his nose, and ‘she took me to a washbasin in this very room, the nursery’, and said to him ‘Don’t cry, little peasant, it’ll heal in time for your wedding’. He was then fifteen and she about twenty-two, ‘very young still, so slim’… I think it’s quite possible he conceived a ‘limerence’ for her as psychologists today call it, or ‘crush’ in theatre parlance, and it’s lasted twenty years. Some theatre directors may well be right in thinking this is why he is so deeply pleased to be able to give her a ‘way out’ of selling her dear orchard, and prefaces it with ‘I love you as one of my own…more than one of my own’. Crushes may last twenty minutes or twenty years, but without reciprocity they can die in a nanosecond. We had now been discussing for over an hour. I apologised, but Tamara then put two killer prepared questions: what, in my opinion, is The Cherry Orchard about, and what would I advise her to avoid at all costs? I was stunned. (She apologised for the frankness of these questions!) But I was able to give my answers, we carried on talking for another fifteen minutes, and she said she found the conversation ‘a joy’. I can’t say I have ever known a theatre director say that to me before. Three hours later in Stratford she was welcoming the King to a performance of The Tempest directed by Richard Eyre. As Alison pointed out, by then Tamara had had plenty of experience of ‘talking to an old buffer’. Photo: https://www.rsc.org.uk/news/a-visit-from-our-patron-his-majesty-the-king (we wanted to rehost the image in that article, which is terrific, but on this occasion the copyright was a little tight so we recommend clicking that link to see text and pictures).
28 May
The RSC has announced the full cast of its Cherry Orchard in a version by Laura Wade directed by Tamara Harvey. It looks simply lovely. Of course, I have not heard of some of the younger actors before, indeed some of them are appearing with the RSC for the first time, but they look vibrant and physically well cast. The central roles are in the hands of incredibly skilled actors, including Kenneth Branagh as Lopakhin. Altogether, it strikes me as perhaps the strongest cast assembled for an English Cherry Orchard since the 1960s. I have hopes of a great and possibly mould-breaking production. It is sold out.
10 June
There’s no doubt in my mind that the attempted annexation of Ukraine has entered its endgame. More Russian soldiers have been killed than British soldiers were in the whole of World War 2. Putin’s popularity is dented. Russia’s economy is nearing breaking point. The Ukrainians are gaining territory. Conditions are becoming favourable for retaking Crimea. But how long will the endgame last and how will it end? Although the Ukrainians are winning on the ground, in desperation Putin has stepped up his deadly missile bombardment. If I have got his psychology right, he will not give in but commit more and more desperate acts, blame everyone else for his failure, destroy his country, and end up in a bunker. Some believe that if he negotiated, carried on as dictator, and escaped the ICC for his war crimes, that would actually be a worse outcome for Russia and the world.
18 June
Subscribers ask me when my book of stories The White Bow/Ghoune is coming out. You are quite right to ask, and I do apologise for not addressing the subject earlier. We are still waiting for the first proofs from Amazon, over a month after submitting our own final typeset text. The delay is unprecedented and we have no way of discovering what is behind it. However, Plans B and C exist and we ourselves are proceeding as fast as possible. The book is likely to be 245 pages, the longest Amazon will have printed for us (we hope!).
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.
Share this:
Related