The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
George Calderon, 1912
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Captain of the 11
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
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)
George Calderon c.1901Recent Comments
- 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)
- John Pym on The essential Oxford novel Horace Hare’s acid and immensely readable Oxford Confessions deserve to sell even more pleasingly than Yale classicist Erich Segal’s Harvard/Radcliffe smash-hit weepie, Love... (January 29, 2026 at 2:39 pm)
- Graeme Wright on The essential Oxford novel If I may be so bold I'll throw into the Oxford quad Javier Marias's novel, All Souls. Here's a taste, courtesy of Penguin and Amazon: "At High Table in an Oxford College, the... (January 28, 2026 at 12:11 pm)
Tag Archives: comments
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
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
Tagged 'Mrs Mortley', Alexander Masters, Annina Lubbock, Auguste Lumière, Autochrome, biographies, biography, Brasted Chart, Captain Charles Evelyn Pym, Catherine Lubbock, Celia Newbolt, comments, Edina Duckworth, Emmetts, Foxwold, Frederic Lubbock, George Calderon, John Pym, Jones, Kittie Calderon, Louis Lumière, Mary Hamilton, National Trust, Percy Lubbock, Richard Wheeler, Roy Lubbock, Sir Henry Newbolt, Susan Chitty, Violet Pym
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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
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Annette Gough, Archie Ripley, biographies, biography, Charles Villiers Stanford, comments, copyright, Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, Dr Albert Tebb, Dullness, Edwin Lankaster, EU, EU Directive on Term of Copyright, Franz Kafka, George Calderon, Grant Richards, Harold Dowdall, King Alfred, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Lord Denning, Mary Cholmondeley, Michael Welch, Nikolai Berdiaev, Nikolai Gogol, Rupert Brooke, superstates, totalitarianism, USSR, William English Harrison, William Rothenstein
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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
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Andrew Baines, Anne Catherine Baines, Battle of the Somme, biographies, biography, C.P. Scott, Caroline Kemplay, Christopher Kemplay, Christopher Tatham, comments, Corpus Christi College Oxford, Edward Baines, ESRC, Geoffrey Bulmer Tatham, Geoffrey Dawson, George Bernard Shaw, George Calderon, Joanna Palmer, John William Baines, journalism, journalists, Leeds Grammar School, Leeds Intelligencer, Leeds Mercury, Magdalen College Oxford, Manchester Guardian, New College Manchester, prosopography, Richard Kemplay, The Great War, Trinity College Cambridge, World War I, Yorkshire Post
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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
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Alison Miles, Artemis Cooper, biographies, biography, Cazalet Chronicles, Cazalet family, Chatto & Windus, Cheltenham Arts Festival, comments, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Inland Waterways Association, John Murray, Kingsley Amis, marriage, Martin Amis, Peter Scott, Slipstream
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‘He was away, far away…’
The S.S. Aguila, a cruise ship of the Yeoward Line, dropped anchor off Funchal, the capital of Madeira, on 31 March 1913, probably around lunchtime. There were twenty-nine passengers aboard, including George Calderon. Within a couple of hours he was sitting … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged acacias, Acton Reynald, African Tulip, Anton Chekhov, Archie Ripley, biographies, biography, Botanical Gardens Funchal, bougainvillea, cable cars, Canary Islands, Charles Lambe, Clara Butt, comments, Dardanelles, Funchal, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Harold Dowdall, Jim Corbet, Kittie Calderon, Las Palmas, Lesbia Corbet, Levada do Norte, Lisbon, Liverpool, Madeira, Manchester, Mary Downdall, Monarch butterfly, Monte, Monte Palace Hotel, Nina Astley, Nina Corbet, Portugal, R.M.S. 'Orsova', Reginald Astley, Revolt, S.S. Aguila, Spain, Tahiti, The Canary Islands, The Fountain, The Great War, Trinity College Oxford, Tropical Gardens Funchal, Well Walk, wicker toboggans, World War I, Yeoward Line
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George L. Calderon, cartoonist
I am extremely grateful to James Miles for his vibrant guest post on Schulz and Peanuts. It certainly improved Calderonia’s viewing figures! I am always loth to ‘take down’ guest posts, because they have something unique and often definitive about them. … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Ballets Russes, biographies, biography, Charles M. Schulz, comments, Funchal, George Calderon, Kittie Calderon, Madeira, Max Beerbohm, Michel Fokine, Peanuts, Percy Lubbock, The Red Cloth
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Guest post: James Miles, ‘Schulz and Peanuts’
Schulz and Peanuts, by David Michaelis, is a scrupulously researched biography of Charles M. Schulz, the prolific cartoonist responsible for the hugely popular Peanuts comic. Indeed ‘responsible’ is particularly accurate here, as we learn in the book of Schulz’s determination … Continue reading
Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged biographies, biography, blogs, cartoons, Charles M. Schulz, Charlie Brown, comments, David Michaelis, Franklin, George Calderon, Harriet Glickman, James Miles, Mark Kermode, Martin Luther King Jr, Patty, Peanuts, Ronald E. Franklin, Shermy, Sparky
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Guest posts and…George a Labour man?
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that biography is going through a particularly fertile and innovative time. I’m always interested, then, in biographies about new subjects and biographies that tell their stories in new ways. Next week, blogmaster … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Alexander Masters, Alison Miles, Arthur Bourchier, biographies, biography, Brideshead Revisited, Charles Schulz, comments, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Evelyn Waugh, Forsyte Saga, George Bernard Shaw, George Calderon, Hubert Harben, Independent Labour Party, James Miles, John Galsworthy, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Brockliss, Mary Jerrold, Philip Harben, Strand Theatre, The Fountain
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The War
Every day brings another press extract in The Times’s ‘The First World War’ series, every week another email in their history of the war, and the stream of Tweets from the Imperial War Museum, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, historical institutions, the … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Belgium, Brexit, commemoration, comments, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Dardanelles, David Reynolds, Gallipoli, General Kitchener, Georg Trakl, George Calderon, Imperial War Museum, Kittie Calderon, Lloyd George, Norman Stone, Paul Nash, Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, The Great War, The Times, Theobald Bethmann Hollweg, Third Battle of Krithia, Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Turnip Winter, Wilfred Owen, William Rothenstein, Woodrow Wilson, World War I, Ypres
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Another wildcard!
After fifty years practice, I have no difficulty transliterating Russian into the Roman alphabet using three different Anglo-American systems; it’s so automatic I can practically switch my brain off as I do it… But I cannot hold the hundred or so … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Aldwych Theatre, Anton Chekhov, bibliography, biography, comments, Frederick Lloyd, George Calderon, Hubert Harben, J.P. Wearing, Kittie Calderon, Mary Jerrold, Modern Humanities Research Association, Novello Theatre, Philip Harben, Strand Theatre, The Cherry Orchard, The Fountain, The London Stage, The Seagull, Theatre Royal Glasgow
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‘The errors of Democracy’
I am very pleased to have been able to incorporate in my Bibliography an article that was published only three weeks ago: Thomas Lansdall-Welfare and others, ‘Content Analysis of 150 Years of British Periodicals’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Archie Ripley, artificial intelligence, autocracy, Brexit, comments, coronations, cricket, culturomics, democracy, Dwala, Edward Carpenter, Emily Wilding Davidson, football, George Calderon, horses, James Thompson, journalism, Kittie Calderon, Liberal Imperialism, Nello Cristiani, newspapers, Oliver Moody, Parliament, proportional representation, referendums, regional newspapers, Russia, suffragettes, suffragists, Thomas Lansdall-Welfare, trains, Trinity College Oxford, Tsarism
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‘Literally for this…’
This is the most original, enjoyable, moving and impressive book about the First World War that I have read since the centenary began. It is not a ‘history’ book like Max Hastings’s Catastrophe, say, Peter Hart’s Gallipoli, or David Reynolds’s The Long … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Adlestrop, Army Veterinary Corps, Belgium, birds, British Expeditionary Force, cats, comments, Dardanelles, David Reynolds, dogs, Edward Elgar, Edward Thomas, Edward Thomas's reason for signing up, Eleanor Farjeon, Ford Madox Hueffer, Gallipoli, George Calderon, horses, John Lewis-Stempel, Max Hastings, Nature, Peter Hart, rabbits, rats, skylarks, The Great War, Warhorse, World War I, Ypres
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Publishing
After nearly fifty years of contact with publishers, I could bore for England on the subject…which means that I must make sure I don’t! I will try to keep this short and focussed on the task of finding the right … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, biographies, biography, comments, George Calderon, Harvey Pitcher, John Murray, Kittie Calderon, publishers, publishing, Sam&Sam, self-publishing, The Great War, World War I, writing mania
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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 →