Riddehough, Geoffrey B.

Geoffrey Blundell Riddehough was born on March 18, 1900, in Bramhall, Cheshire, England. Educated in Penticton, B.C., he went on to become a UBC Fairview graduate, earning a first class honours B.A. (1924) in Latin and English in addition to being awarded the Governor General's gold medal as head of his graduating class. Riddehough obtained his M.A. in English from the University of California, Berkeley (1925). After teaching in the English Department at the University of Alberta for several years on a contract basis, the Nichol Scholarship enabled Riddehough to pursue his studies and research interests in London and at La Sorbonne in Paris (1929-1932). Returning to Canada in the autumn of 1932, he set aside his PhD. studies at the University of Toronto to become a classics instructor at UBC. Riddehough joined the UBC faculty in 1933 and remained a member of the Department of Classics for the next thirty-eight years. While at UBC, he continued to pursue his education, obtaining a M.A. (1939) in classics and a Ph.D. from Harvard (1951) with a thesis on the medieval poet Joseph of Exeter. While studying at Harvard, his dissertation essay "De Medeae In Iasonem Odio" won the Bowdoin Latin Prize (1950). At UBC, Riddehough specialized in Medieval Latin and was noted for his satirical verse. Riddehough was a prolific writer and a number of his essays, poems, and short stories were published in a variety of journals and newspapers. Two of his better known works were his collection of verse, "Dance to the Anthill" (1972) and the posthumously published "Rueful Rhymes: The Satirical Verse of a Couple of Anti-Bodies" (1994) that was co-authored by Geoffrey A. Spencer. Riddehough was familiar with several languages, including French and Cornish, as well as being versed in ancient Greek and Latin. An interest in the paranormal led Riddehough to participate in a Wicca witch-naming ceremony on the Isle of Man. He wrote numerous short stories about his female witch persona, Anaitis, and the majority of the correspondence from Riddehough within the Pegeen Brennan and Doreen Nalos sous-fonds are signed with the Anaitis symbol. Riddehough died suddenly on April 6, 1978, in London, England, while returning to Vancouver after a holiday in Malta.