A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
George Calderon c.1901
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
George Calderon, 1912
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Captain of the 11
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Basic form of the Calderon coat of armsRecent 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
Flashback — and tourbillions in Time (again)
The Imperial War Museum invited me to contribute a post to their Research Blog, and I promptly accepted. I am not, of course, a military historian, and when I started researching the last ten months of George’s life I was … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged 'real time', biographies, biography, C.F. Aspinall-Oglander, Captain Grogan, Captain Hogan, Captain Paterson, Clare Hopkins, comments, Daniel Joiner, Dardanelles, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Jack Harley, King's Own Scottish Borderers, Kittie Calderon, KOSB, Major G.B. Stoney, Official History, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, Peter Hart, R.M.E. Reeves, Robert Graves, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, World War I
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Dialogue at a dinner
SHE: Who is this man you are talking about? ME: He’s Edwardian. SHE: Is Edwardian? Surely you mean he was Edwardian? ME: Well no, he is Edwardian. SHE: No no, you can’t say that. He was Edwardian! ME: Er… Next entry: De-appled
Katy’s hat trick
Long-term followers of this blog know that Katy George burst onto it back in March, when she came across a perfectly preserved letter of Kittie’s in a charity shop in Deal, Googled on Kittie, found us, and offered the letter … Continue reading
The last blurt
I thought I had got everything out about the completion of my biography of George Calderon in my post of 18 June, but no: there is something I forgot to say and have been meaning to put on record for … Continue reading
Commemoration (concluded)
Since this blog started in July last year, I have taken part in many conversations, both viva voce and online, about followers’ responses to George Calderon’s war experience, to the War as it has been unfolding, and to what I … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Aeschylus, arachnophobia, Battle of Waterloo, catharsis, Clare Hopkins, closure, commemoration, comments, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Dardanelles, Diana Princess of Wales, empathy, Foxwold, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Jim Corbet, John Hussey, John Pym, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Lesbia Corbet, Mikhail Bakhtin, Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, Santanu Das, Søren Kierkegaard, The Great War, The Lusitania, Third Battle of Krithia, tragedy, Wilfred Owen, William Shakespeare, World War I
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Commemoration (to be concluded)
Mr Pym, who is the grandson of Violet and Evey Pym, of Foxwold, two of the Calderons’ closest friends, sent me this poem a fortnight before the anniversary of George Calderon’s death. He was not able to take part in … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Archie Ripley, Captain Charles Evelyn Pym, Catherine Lubbock, comments, Dardanelles, Devonport, Earlham, Emmetts, Foxwold, Frederic Lubbock, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Hampstead, Horatius, John Pym, King's Own Scottish Borderers, Kittie Calderon, Laura Ripley, Percy Lubbock, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Violet Pym, Well Walk, World War I
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Gallipoli: planning a disaster
The Third Battle of Krithia, in which George Calderon was killed on 4 June, may have been the bloodiest single battle fought by the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force at Gallipoli, i.e. in terms of its own losses. Enemy losses, both in … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Personal commentary
Tagged Anzac Cove, comments, Dardanelles, Fir Tree Spur, Gallipoli, General Kitchener, General William Birdwood, George Calderon, Gully Ravine, Gully Spur, Haricot Redoubt, Helles, Ian Hamilton, Kereves Spur, King's Own Scottish Borderers, KOSB, Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, Royal Scots, Scottish Rifles, Suvla, The Great War, The Quadrilateral, Third Battle of Krithia, World War I
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‘Tributes’
A Russianist who has read Percy Lubbock’s George Calderon: A Sketch from Memory (1921) asks me why I have not posted more tributes to George than my own. The reason is simply that tributes were not published until his death became … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged A.B. Lowry, Clare Hopkins, commemoration, comments, Dardanelles, For the Fallen, G.F. Bradby, Gallipoli, George Calderon, H.C. Bradby, Harold Dowdall, John Masefield, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Lawrence Le Breton Hammond, Leonora Bagg, Manolo Ordoño de Rosales, Percy Lubbock, Sir Coote Hedley, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Thomas Sturge Moore, tributes, Trinity College Oxford, World War I
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Commemoration (to be continued 2)
Plan A for a commemoration of George’s death (see yesterday’s post) was really dictated by long accepted British forms of commemorative ritual. These have loosened up in recent years, of course, to a point where you have extended, all-singing-and-dancing customer-devised … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged commemoration, comments, Dardanelles, Evey Pym, Foxwold, Francois Rabelais, Gallipoli, George Calderon, John Pym, Kittie Calderon, Nina Astley, Nina Corbet, Peter Hart, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Violet Pym, World War I
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Commemoration (to be continued 1)
The organisation of a public commemoration of George Calderon’s sacrifice on 4 June 1915, and the experience of the form it eventually took, have raised a huge number of questions in my and other Calderonians’ minds. Very long emails were … Continue reading
‘Things fall apart’
Since George Calderon’s death at noon in the Third Battle of Krithia on 4 June 1915 the timeline of this blog has frayed almost to nothingness. I understand the disorientation and even irritation of some followers who have emailed me. … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
Tagged 'real time', 1/5th King's Own Scottish Borderers, Alexandria, biography, Captain James Grogan, comments, Dardanelles, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Gertrude Bell, Hoe Benham, Imbros, King's Own Scottish Borderers, Kittie Calderon, KOSB, Lemnos, Percy Lubbock, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, World War I
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20 June 1915
Today at Hoe Benham Kittie received George’s last two letters (1 and 3 June 1915 — see my posts of those dates 2015), redirected from Hampstead at 5.45 p.m. yesterday. The Field Post marks are clearly 1 and 3 June … Continue reading
The biographer blurts
Ah dear, it’s time to come clean. The ‘disaster’ has happened: this blog is now a fortnight ahead of the writing of my biography itself. I finished Chapter 14 of the biography with George going over the top on 4 … Continue reading
REVIEW. Lorna C. Beckett, The Second I Saw You: The True Love Story of Rupert Brooke and Phyllis Gardner (British Library, 2015), 208 pp.
The chance sight of an email that I sent my military research assistant on 22 July 2014 recalls me with a start to the fact that I began researching the last year of George Calderon’s life exactly a year ago! … Continue reading →