Melancholy River - Tapa blanda

This epic poem was partly conceived as a reaction to the pre-Raphaelite painting the Lady of Shallot and submitted as an official piece of GCSE English coursework in 1994. I have extensively re-edited it as a piece of children’s literature. The tale would interest anyone with a passion for fantasy literature and children’s verse. It is a traditional fairy tale about the relationship between the water spirit Pippa Boy and the water nymph River Girl that starts off peacefully and ends in tragedy after the intervention of the birds and the fairies. The likeness to the Lady of Shallot comes as a surprise, so I’ll keep that place in the story secret for you to discover.

Hugh Waldock was born into a middle income family in Marylebone, London in 1977. He has lived in many different towns and cities including London, Witham, Essex, Colchester, Berlin Lichterfelde, Kassel Nordstadt, Wuppertal Elberfeld and Cologne Lindenthal. He attended a traditional English public school, called Ipswich School where he passed all thirteen of his high school exams. He went on to study many subjects at music college and university including music, musicology, English, applied linguistics and German both in the UK and in Germany. This period of learning ended with a masters degree in English for Specific Purposes a branch of English Language and Linguistics. During his time at university he taught English in language schools and in companies in the Rhineland and Ruhr area of North-Rhine Westphalia in Germany. He also worked briefly as a countertenor soloist singer. Hugh’s writing career began at school when he won a school prize for composing and reading his own poem in a literature performance competition final. Since then he has written two novels and three other publications of which this is one. He is single and enjoys cooking world cuisine for his friends. His life philosophy is very much one of making every side of you work as part of a career.