Copyright © text 2026 & image 2011 by George Taylor. All rights reserved.
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Siddartha
Mixed media on canvas
2011
85cm x 74cm
Siddartha is the title a 1922 philosophical novel by the German - Swiss author Hermann Hesse, that explains a spiritual journey of self-discovery.
It is set in ancient India during the time of Gautama Buddha.
The singer-songwriter Ralph McTell has a song titled ‘The Ferryman’ on his 1971 album You Well-Meaning Brought Me Here which was inspired by Hesse’s book, I have a fifty- five years old vinyl copy of the album ‘under the stairs’.
McTell’s mother lived in Banbury with her sister Olive, during the second World War, before moving to Croydon, McTell was born in Farnborough on 3rd December 1944. I was born in Banbury on 25th August of that same year.
McTell continued to visit his aunt at Banbury, spending childhood summers by the Oxford Canal which runs through the town and writing the song ‘Barges’, which recalls his experiences on that canal. This song was recorded on his 1972 album Not till Tomorrow, a first copy of which I also have.
(The Oxford was an early narrow canal, so barges, by definition, would not have been used there, but rather so-called narrowboats. McTell almost certainly would have used the term ‘Barges’ for poetic/rhythmic reasons)
I too, spent many hours of my childhood by that canal and was possibly, one of the ‘country-boys’ that Ralph encountered on the canal, but I have no express recollection of that.
In 2007, Mc Tell had a special homecoming gala concert at St Mary’s, Banbury Parish Church, where I was christened in September 1944. I was in the audience, for that concert.
The bringing together of these two very different, exquisitely crafted and exceptionally sensitive songs - one about a metaphorical, mythical river and the other, as Ralph explains in ‘Barges’, ‘that was by man begun’; in fact, an actual engineered waterway - in that environment, had an especially poignant and powerful resonance for me.
George Taylor
August 2026
