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This is the first full-length biography of the first modern British Russianist and the man who put Chekhov’s plays on the British stage. It is based on the archive of George and Katharine Calderon discovered in a Scottish attic. The author reveals Calderon’s traumatic experience in Russia, his passionate courtship, why he went to Tahiti, his relations with William Rothenstein, Laurence Binyon, Constance Garnett, Michel Fokine and others, and his far-sighted Communitarian politics. For the first time it is established how Calderon died at Gallipoli aged 46 and where he is probably buried. The biography also focusses on Calderon’s writing, his marriage, his heroic wife, and her lifetime relationship with another woman. ‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ – Charlotte Jones, Times Literary Supplement. |
