Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
George Calderon c.1901
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
George Calderon, 1912
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Captain of the 11
Monarch Butterfly MadeiraRecent Comments
- Jim D G Miles on From the diary of a writer-publisher: 28 Excellent entry, Dad. I like the escape room picture, of course, but the story about the Russian and the hole-in-the-wall is exceptional! (28/03/2024 at 9:58 PM)
- Patrick Miles on Short story: ‘Crox’ Thank you, dear anonymous Theo...it is so refreshing to hear the reaction of a Man of the People! Keep a good grip on those cords! 'Part II'?! The rest is secreted in lines (18/12/2023 at 10:33 PM)
- Theo on Short story: ‘Crox’ Delicious! "Are you being Served?" meets "Keeping up Appearances" via Calderotica. But Patrick, you cannot leave us dangling like that just before Christmas! One thing - c (18/12/2023 at 1:35 PM)
- Patrick Miles on Cambridge Tales 8: ‘Black Tie’ Thank you, Damian, for sharing your problem with us. It's difficult to know what to prescribe. Perhaps try examining the facts of the story (e.g. there are not 6 medics in the (20/11/2023 at 9:44 AM)
- Damian Grant on Cambridge Tales 8: ‘Black Tie’ Patrick: I read your story 'Black Tie' on Monday, and knew immediately that it didn't work for me. There was something forced, factitious; something that didn't let the elemen (17/11/2023 at 2:26 PM)
Tag Archives: Alexander Pushkin
From the diary of a writer-publisher: 22
24 February 2023 A recent study made by a reliable Moscow source indicates that 22% of the Russians polled were fervently in favour of the war on Ukraine, 20% were deeply opposed to it, and the rest (58%) ‘had no … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Personal commentary
Tagged acting agencies, Alexander Pushkin, Alexandra Cann, autocracy, ballet, Ballets Russes, biographies, books, Boris Godunov, Call My Agent, Callimachus, comments, democracy, Dix pour cent, France, freedom, Friedrich Nietzsche, George Balanchine, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Granta Publishing, independent publishing, James Miles, Jennifer Homans, Lincoln Kirstein, literary agents, Michel Fokine, Moscow, Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, New York City Ballet, opinion polls, responsibility, Russia, Sam&Sam, School of American Ballet, theatre agents, theosophy, Ukraine, Vladimir Soloviev, Volodymyr Zelensky, William Rothenstein
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War and woof poetry
Judging by allusions and quotations in his speeches, Volodymyr Zelensky either has a good knowledge of literature himself, or his team does. Unlike Putin, he speaks in a cultured manner, beautifully clearly and expressively, with a literary turn. In an … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Alexander Blok, Alexander Pushkin, Berlin, compromise, dogs, Nazi Germany, Peter Levi, propaganda, Red Army, Robin Milner-Gulland, Russia, Russian poetry, sentimentality, Sergei Yesenin, talant, To Russia's Slanderers, translation, USSR, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vladimir Putin, Volodomyr Zelensky, war poetry, World War 2, Yevgeny Yevtushenko
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Grow old they shall not
It is the time of year again when I tussle with the question of how George’s friend Laurence Binyon’s half-line ‘They shall grow not old’ should be spoken (or mutely read), what it means depending on how you speak it, … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Alexander Pushkin, Alfred Tennyson, Armistice Day, commemoration, comments, Elizabeth Browning, Eric Griffiths, For the Fallen, Freya Johnston, Friedrich Hölderlin, George Calderon, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Dewey, John Mullan, Laurence Binyon, Patmos, Remembrance Sunday, Robert Browning, The Bronze Horseman, The Great War, Thomas Hardy, Victorian poetry, war poetry, World War I
4 Comments
Guest post: Michael Pursglove on the ‘forgotten translators’
My interest in early translations from Russian, and especially in their translators, began when I was setting to work on my translation of Turgenev’s Virgin Soil in 2014. It became clear that this would be the first new translation of … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary, Uncategorized
Tagged Alexander Pushkin, Alfred Knox, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Anna Karenina, Anna Kern, Anton Chekhov, Beatrix Tollemache, Charles Townsend, East-West Review, Eugène Gothi, George Sand, Ivan Goncharov, Ivan Turgenev, James Heard, James Muckle, Jerome K. Jerome, Lev Tolstoi, Marguerite Bryant, Michael Pursglove, Michel Delines, Mikhail Ashkinazi, Nadine Jarintzoff, Oliver Goldsmith, Ramsay Macdonald, Rochelle Townsend, The Precipice, The Vicar of Wakefield, Three Men in a Boat, Uncle Vanya, Virgin Soil, Wilhelm Goldschmidt
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Inestimable Russianist 2: John Dewey
(This series is timed to coincide with the 2019 Annual Conference of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies at Robinson College, Cambridge.) It is no exaggeration to say that John Dewey befriended Calderonia out of the blue — … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Academe, Alexander Pushkin, Alexandrine, biographies, biography, Boris Yampolsky, Brimstone Press, choriamb, comments, Fedor Tiutchev, Fyodor Tyutchev, George Calderon, Glas, Harvey Pitcher, Irina Muravyova, John Dewey, John Dryden Prize, Ksenia Zhukova, Michael Pursglove, Mirror of the Soul: A Life of the Poet Tyutchev, prosody, publishers, Ruslan and Ludmila, Russian Studies, Stanley Mitchell, T.J. Binyon, The Bronze Horseman, Yevgeny Zamyatin
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Inestimable Russianist 1: Michael Pursglove
(This series is timed to coincide with the 2019 Annual Conference of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies held 12-14 April at Robinson College, Cambridge, where Sam&Sam will be promoting George Calderon: Edwardian Genius.) When Michael Pursglove … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged A.B. Murphy, Alexander Pushkin, Alma Books, Andrei Voznesenskii, Andrew Assumption, Anna Karenina, Aylmer Maude, BASEES, comments, Constance Garnett, deaf community, Dmitrii Grigorovich, Fedor Dostoevskii, Fedor Tyutchev, George Calderon, Great Britain-Russia Society, Ivan Turgenev, Larissa Miller, Lev Tolstoy, Louise Maude, Michael Pursglove, Mikhail Lermontov, Moscow and Muscovites, Mrs Shapter, Petr Viazemskii, Professor Rose, publishers, Reading University, Robert Conquest, Robinson College, Russianists, translators, Vladimir Giliarovskii
2 Comments
Sam&Sam publishers — a brief history
George Calderon: Edwardian Genius will be published under the imprint Sam&Sam. ‘What?’ you ask. ‘What on earth’s that?’ Quite. It was deliberately concocted to give nothing away, because it originated in Russia in the period of samizdat. Having been a dissident … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Alexander Pushkin, Camizdat, carbons, comments, Duma, Georgii Fedotov, Joseph Brodsky, Joseph Stalin, KGB, Maia, Martis, mice, Nikolai Berdiaev, perestroika, publishing, Sam&Sam, samizdat, Samuel Goathead, sonnets, Sophie Koulomzin, typewriters, Vladimir Lenin, William Shakespeare
6 Comments
Russia (to be concluded)
My favourite Soviet dissident was Andrei Amal’rik (1938-80). He was short, he had suffered physically during two terms of exile in Siberia, but he was very squarely built and radiated resistance and survival. His black hair was cut in what … Continue reading
Russia (to be continued)
There is something I dread at dinner parties: being asked about ‘Russia’. I hope and pray, pray and hope, that no-one has heard I was a ‘Russianist’ in another life, lived in Russia under the Communist regime, smuggled for … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Alexander Pushkin, Andrei Sakharov, Andrei Voznesenskii, Bolshevik coup, Boris Pasternak, comments, dinner parties, Fedor Dostoevskii, Fedor Tiutchev, George Calderon, Joseph Brodsky, Khodynka, Lev Tolstoi, Mongol Invasion, Nicholas II, October Revolution, Osip Mandel'shtam, Petr Viazemskii, Russia, Russianists, Vladimir Putin
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A terrific find
Please read Katy George’s and my Comments for the background to this letter, which Katy discovered recently amongst some papers of Mrs Raikes in a charity shop in Deal, Kent. New letters of Kittie Calderon’s are as rare as new … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
Tagged Alexander Pushkin, Captain Charles Evelyn Pym, Downton Abbey, Evey Pym, Evgenii Onegin, Foxwold, George Calderon, Gladys Raikes, Highclere, Johnnie Pym, Katy George, Kittie Calderon, Oxford, Percy Lubbock, St Hilda's Hall, St Petersburg, Tom Raikes, Trinity College Oxford, Violet Pym, William Rothenstein
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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 27
16 January 2024 I translated a few poems as a teenager and student (Rilke, Brecht, Hölderlin, Pushkin, Tiutchev, Mayakovsky, Yevtushenko, Brodsky), but bothered to see only a couple published. The fact was, I didn’t take verse translation very seriously. I … Continue reading →