Mervyn Peake
Encyclopedia
Mervyn Laurence Peake was an English
writer, artist
, poet
and illustrator
. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast
books. (The three works were part of what Peake conceived as a lengthy cycle, the completion of which was halted by his death.) They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J. R. R. Tolkien
, but his surreal fiction was influenced by his early love for Charles Dickens
and Robert Louis Stevenson
rather than Tolkien's studies of mythology
and philology
.
Peake also wrote poetry and literary nonsense
in verse form, short stories for adults and children (Letters from a Lost Uncle), stage and radio plays, and Mr Pye
, a relatively tightly-structured novel in which God
implicitly mocks the evangelical pretensions and cosy world-view of the eponymous hero.
Peake first made his reputation as a painter and illustrator during the 1930s and 1940s, when he lived in London, and he was commissioned to produce portraits of well-known people. A collection of these drawings is still in the possession of his family. Although he gained little popular success in his lifetime, his work was highly respected by his peers, and his friends included Dylan Thomas
and Graham Greene
. His works are now included in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, the Imperial War Museum
and The National Archives.
In 2008, The Times
named Peake among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers
since 1945". Peake's grandson is British musician and singer-songwriter Jack Peñate
.
Province of central China
in 1911 only three months before the revolution and the founding of the Republic of China
. His father Ernest Cromwell Peake was a medical missionary
doctor
with the London Missionary Society
of the Congregationalist tradition
and his mother, Amanda Elizabeth Powell, had come to China as a missionary assistant.
The Peakes were given leave to visit England just before World War I in 1914 and returned to China in 1916. Mervyn Peake attended Tientsin Grammar School until the family left for England in December 1922 via the Trans-Siberian Railway
. About this time he wrote a novella, The White Chief of the Umzimbooboo Kaffirs. Mervyn Peake never returned to China but it has been noted that Chinese influences can be detected in Peake's works, not least in the castle of Gormenghast itself, which in some respects echoes the ancient walled city of Peking (Beijing
) as well as the enclosed compound where he grew up in Tientsin (Tianjin). It is also likely that his early exposure to the contrasts between the lives of the Europeans, and of the Chinese, and between the poor and the wealthy in China also exerted an influence on the Gormenghast books.
His education continued at Eltham College
, Mottingham
(1923-1929), where his talents were encouraged by his English teacher, Eric Drake. He completed his formal education at Croydon School of Art
in the autumn of 1929 and then at the Royal Academy Schools from December 1929 to 1933, where he first painted in oils. By this time he had written his first long poem, 'A Touch o' the Ash'. In 1931 he had a painting accepted for display by the Royal Academy
and exhibited his work with the so-called "Soho Group".
for a time. He first moved to Sark in 1932 where his former teacher Eric Drake was setting up an artists' colony. In 1934 he exhibited with the Sark artists both in the Sark Gallery built by Drake and at the Cooling Galleries in London. In 1935 he exhibited at the Royal Academy and at the Leger Galleries in London.
In 1936 he returned to London and was commissioned to design the sets and costumes for Insect Play and his work was acclaimed in The Sunday Times
. He also began teaching life drawing at Westminster School of Art
where he met painter Maeve Gilmore
, whom he married in 1937. They had three children, Sebastian (b. 1940), Fabian (b. 1942), and Clare (b. 1949).
He had a very successful exhibition of paintings at the Calmann Gallery in London in 1938 and his first book, the self-illustrated children's pirate romance Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor
(based on a story he had written around 1936) was first published in 1939 by Country Life. In December 1939 he was commissioned by Chatto & Windus to illustrate a children's book, Ride a Cock Horse and Other Nursery Rhymes, published for the Christmas market in 1940.
he applied to become a war artist
for he was keen to put his skills at the service of his country. He imagined An Exhibition by the Artist, Adolf Hitler, in which horrific images of war with ironic titles were offered as 'artworks' by the Nazi leader. Although the drawings were bought by the British Ministry of Information, his application was turned down and he was conscripted
in the Army, where he served first with the Royal Artillery, then with the Royal Engineers. He began writing Titus Groan at this time.
In April 1942, after his requests for commissions as a war artist - or even leave to depict war damage in London - had been consistently refused, he suffered a nervous breakdown and was sent to Southport Hospital. That autumn he was taken on as a graphic artist by the Ministry of Information for a period of six months. The next spring he was invalided out of the Army. In 1943 he was commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee to paint glassblowers
at a Birmingham
factory making cathode ray tubes for the early radar sets. One of these paintings is on permanent display in Manchester Art Gallery.
's Hunting of the Snark (for which he was reportedly paid only £5) and Alice in Wonderland, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the Brothers Grimm
's Household Tales, All This and Bevin Too by Quentin Crisp
and Robert Louis Stevenson
's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, as well as producing many original poems, drawings, and paintings.
Peake designed the logo for Pan Books
. The publishers offered him either a flat fee of £10 or a royalty of one farthing per book. On the advice of Graham Greene
, who told him that paperback books were a passing fad that wouldn't last, Peake opted for the £10.
A book of nonsense poems, Rhymes Without Reason, was published in 1944 and was described by John Betjeman
as "outstanding". Shortly after the war ended in 1945 he was commissioned by a magazine to visit France
and Germany
. With writer Tom Pocock
he was among the first British civilians to witness the horrors of the Nazi
concentration camp at Belsen, where the remaining prisoners, too sick to be moved, were dying before his very eyes. He made several drawings, but not surprisingly he found the experience profoundly harrowing, and expressed in deeply felt poems the ambiguity of turning their suffering into art.
In 1946 the family moved to Sark
, where Peake continued to write and illustrate, and Maeve painted. Gormenghast
was published in 1950, and the family moved back to England, settling in Smarden
, Kent
. Peake taught part-time at the Central School of Art, began his comic novel Mr Pye, and renewed his interest in theatre. His father died that year and left his house in Hillside Gardens in Wallington
, Surrey
to Mervyn. Mr Pye
was published in 1953, and he later adapted it as a radio play. The BBC
broadcast other plays of his in 1954 and 1956.
, financed by a friend who hoped that Peake's health, which was already declining, would be improved by the holiday. That year his novella Boy in Darkness
was published beside stories by William Golding
and John Wyndham in a volume called Sometime, Never. On 18 December the BBC
broadcast his radio play The Eye of the Beholder (later revised as The Voice of One) in which an avante-garde artist is commissioned to paint a church mural. Peake placed much hope in his play The Wit To Woo which was finally staged in London's West End in 1957, but it was a critical and commercial failure. This affected him greatly – his health degenerated rapidly and he was again admitted to hospital with a nervous breakdown.
, for which he was given electroconvulsive therapy
, to little avail. Over the next few years he gradually lost the ability to draw steadily and quickly, although he still managed to produce some drawings with the help of his wife. Among his last completed works were the illustrations for Balzac's Droll Stories (1961) and for his own poem The Rhyme Of The Flying Bomb (1962), which he had written some 15 years earlier.
Titus Alone
was published in 1959 and was revised by Langdon Jones in 1970 to remove apparent inconsistencies introduced by the publisher's careless editing. A 1995 edition of all three completed Gormenghast novels includes a very short fragment of the beginning of what would have been the fourth Gormenghast novel, Titus Awakes
, as well as a listing of events and themes he wanted to address in that and later Gormenghast novels.
, Sussex
.
His work, especially the Gormenghast series, became much better known and more widely appreciated after his death. They have since been translated into more than two dozen languages.
(1962), Poems & Drawings (1965), and A Reverie of Bone (1967). After his death came Selected Poems (1972), followed by Peake's Progress in (1979 – though the Penguin edition of 1982, with many corrections, including a whole stanza inadvertently omitted from the hardback edition, is to be preferred). The Collected Poems of Mervyn Peake was published by Carcanet Press
in June 2008. Other collections include The Drawings of Mervyn Peake (1974), Writings and Drawings (1974), and Mervyn Peake: the man and his art (2006). A collected edition of the works, issued to celebrate Peake's centenary year, has been announced for publication by Queen Anne Press
(2012).
broadcast eight hour-long episodes for radio dramatising the complete Gormenghast Trilogy. This was the first to include the third book Titus Alone
.
In 1984, BBC Radio 4
broadcast two 90-minute plays based on Titus Groan and Gormenghast
, adapted by Brian Sibley
and starring Sting as Steerpike
and Freddie Jones
as the Artist (narrator). A slightly abridged compilation of the two, running to 160 minutes, and entitled Titus Groan of Gormenghast, was broadcast on Christmas Day, 1992. BBC 7
repeated the original versions on 21 and 28 September 2003.
In 1986, Mr Pye was adapted as a four-part Channel 4 miniseries starring Derek Jacobi
.
In 2000, the BBC
and WGBH Boston co-produced a lavish miniseries, titled Gormenghast, based on the first two books of the series. It starred Jonathan Rhys-Meyers
as Steerpike, Neve McIntosh
as Fuchsia, June Brown
as Nannie Slagg, Ian Richardson
as Lord Groan, Christopher Lee
as Flay, Richard Griffiths
as Swelter, Warren Mitchell
as Barquentine, Celia Imrie
as Countess Gertrude, Lynsey Baxter
and Zoë Wanamaker
as the twins, Cora and Clarice, and John Sessions
as Dr Prunesquallor. The supporting cast included Olga Sosnovska
, Stephen Fry
and Eric Sykes
and the series is also notable as the last screen performance by comedy legend Spike Milligan
(as the Headmaster).
A minimalist stage version of Gormenghast performed by the David Glass Ensemble was adapted by John Constable and directed by David Glass. The production features atmospheric music and lighting and relies heavily on mime, all to convey the immense vastness of the Gormenghast castle on the small stage. It toured theatres in the UK during 2006 and 2007.
A 30-minute TV short film A Boy In Darkness (also made in 2000 and adapted from Peake's novella) was the first production from the BBC Drama Lab. It was set in a 'virtual' computer-generated world created by young computer game designers, and starred Jack Ryder
(from EastEnders
) as Titus, with Terry Jones
(Monty Python's Flying Circus
) narrating.
Irmin Schmidt
, founder of seminal German 'Krautrock
' group Can
wrote an opera called Gormenghast, based on the novels; it was first performed in Wuppertal, Germany, in November 1998. A number of early songs by New Zealand rock group Split Enz
were inspired by Peake's work. The song "The Drowning Man", by British band The Cure
, is inspired by events in Gormenghast, and the song "Lady Fuchsia" by another British band, Strawbs, is also based on events in the novels.
Peake's play The Cave
, which dates from the mid-1950s, was given a first public reading at the Blue Elephant theatre
in Camberwell
(London) in 2009, and had its world premiere in the same theatre, directed by Aaron Paterson, on 19th October 2010.
In 2011 Brian Sibley adapted the story again, this time as six one-hour episodes broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as the Classic Serial
starting on 10 July 2011. The serial was titled "The History of Titus Groan" and adapted all three novels written by Mervyn Peake and the recently discovered concluding volume, "Titus Awakes
" completed by his widow, Maeve Gilmore
. It starred Luke Treadaway
as Titus, David Warner
as the Artist and Carl Prekopp
as Steerpike. It also starred Paul Rhys
, Miranda Richardson
, James Fleet
, Tamsin Greig
, Fenella Woolgar
, Adrian Scarborough
and Mark Benton
among others.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
writer, artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
, poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and illustrator
Illustrator
An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...
. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast
Gormenghast (series)
The Gormenghast series comprises three novels by Mervyn Peake, featuring Castle Gormenghast, and Titus Groan, the title character of the first book.-Works in the series:...
books. (The three works were part of what Peake conceived as a lengthy cycle, the completion of which was halted by his death.) They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
, but his surreal fiction was influenced by his early love for Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
and Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....
rather than Tolkien's studies of mythology
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
and philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
.
Peake also wrote poetry and literary nonsense
Literary nonsense
Literary nonsense is a broad categorization of literature that uses sensical and nonsensical elements to defy language conventions or logical reasoning...
in verse form, short stories for adults and children (Letters from a Lost Uncle), stage and radio plays, and Mr Pye
Mr Pye
-Plot:Mr. Pye travels to the Channel Island of Sark to awaken a love of God in all the islanders. His landlady on the island, Miss Dredger, quickly becomes a devout follower of his teachings. and even agrees to allow the person she hates the most, Miss George, to stay in her house. As Pye does good...
, a relatively tightly-structured novel in which God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
implicitly mocks the evangelical pretensions and cosy world-view of the eponymous hero.
Peake first made his reputation as a painter and illustrator during the 1930s and 1940s, when he lived in London, and he was commissioned to produce portraits of well-known people. A collection of these drawings is still in the possession of his family. Although he gained little popular success in his lifetime, his work was highly respected by his peers, and his friends included Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
and Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
. His works are now included in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, the Imperial War Museum
Imperial War Museum
Imperial War Museum is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London. The museum was founded during the First World War in 1917 and intended as a record of the war effort and sacrifice of Britain and her Empire...
and The National Archives.
In 2008, The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
named Peake among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers
British literature
British Literature refers to literature associated with the United Kingdom, Isle of Man and Channel Islands. By far the largest part of British literature is written in the English language, but there are bodies of written works in Latin, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Cornish, Manx, Jèrriais,...
since 1945". Peake's grandson is British musician and singer-songwriter Jack Peñate
Jack Peñate
Jack Fabian Peñate is an English musician and singer-songwriter signed to XL Recordings.-Early life:Jack Peñate attended St. Olave's Preparatory School, New Eltham until he left to attend Alleyn's School when he was 18 years of age...
.
Early life
Mervyn Peake was born of British parents in Kuling (Lushan) in JiangxiJiangxi
' is a southern province in the People's Republic of China. Spanning from the banks of the Yangtze River in the north into hillier areas in the south, it shares a border with Anhui to the north, Zhejiang to the northeast, Fujian to the east, Guangdong to the south, Hunan to the west, and Hubei to...
Province of central China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
in 1911 only three months before the revolution and the founding of the Republic of China
Republic of China
The Republic of China , commonly known as Taiwan , is a unitary sovereign state located in East Asia. Originally based in mainland China, the Republic of China currently governs the island of Taiwan , which forms over 99% of its current territory, as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu and other minor...
. His father Ernest Cromwell Peake was a medical missionary
Medical missions in China
Medical missions in China by Protestant Christian physicians and surgeons of the 19th and early 20th centuries laid many foundations for modern medicine in China. Western medical missionaries established the first modern clinics and hospitals,provided the first training for nurses, and opened the...
doctor
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
with the London Missionary Society
London Missionary Society
The London Missionary Society was a non-denominational missionary society formed in England in 1795 by evangelical Anglicans and Nonconformists, largely Congregationalist in outlook, with missions in the islands of the South Pacific and Africa...
of the Congregationalist tradition
Congregational church
Congregational churches are Protestant Christian churches practicing Congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs....
and his mother, Amanda Elizabeth Powell, had come to China as a missionary assistant.
The Peakes were given leave to visit England just before World War I in 1914 and returned to China in 1916. Mervyn Peake attended Tientsin Grammar School until the family left for England in December 1922 via the Trans-Siberian Railway
Trans-Siberian Railway
The Trans-Siberian Railway is a network of railways connecting Moscow with the Russian Far East and the Sea of Japan. It is the longest railway in the world...
. About this time he wrote a novella, The White Chief of the Umzimbooboo Kaffirs. Mervyn Peake never returned to China but it has been noted that Chinese influences can be detected in Peake's works, not least in the castle of Gormenghast itself, which in some respects echoes the ancient walled city of Peking (Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
) as well as the enclosed compound where he grew up in Tientsin (Tianjin). It is also likely that his early exposure to the contrasts between the lives of the Europeans, and of the Chinese, and between the poor and the wealthy in China also exerted an influence on the Gormenghast books.
His education continued at Eltham College
Eltham College
This article is about the school in London, England. For the school in Research, Australia see Eltham College of Education.Eltham College is an independent school situated in Mottingham in south-east London...
, Mottingham
Mottingham
Mottingham is a district of south London, England; located at the convergence of the London Borough of Bromley, the London Borough of Lewisham and the London Borough of Greenwich...
(1923-1929), where his talents were encouraged by his English teacher, Eric Drake. He completed his formal education at Croydon School of Art
Croydon College
Croydon College, established in 1895, is a Further Education and Higher Education institution in the London Borough of Croydon.Located in East Croydon, it is made up of a Further Education College and a Higher Education College.- Further Education :...
in the autumn of 1929 and then at the Royal Academy Schools from December 1929 to 1933, where he first painted in oils. By this time he had written his first long poem, 'A Touch o' the Ash'. In 1931 he had a painting accepted for display by the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
and exhibited his work with the so-called "Soho Group".
Career
His early career in the 1930s was as a painter in London, although he lived on the Channel Island of SarkSark
Sark is a small island in the Channel Islands in southwestern English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. It is a royal fief, geographically located in the Channel Islands in the Bailiwick of Guernsey, with its own set of laws based on Norman law and its own parliament. It has a population...
for a time. He first moved to Sark in 1932 where his former teacher Eric Drake was setting up an artists' colony. In 1934 he exhibited with the Sark artists both in the Sark Gallery built by Drake and at the Cooling Galleries in London. In 1935 he exhibited at the Royal Academy and at the Leger Galleries in London.
In 1936 he returned to London and was commissioned to design the sets and costumes for Insect Play and his work was acclaimed in The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times (UK)
The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...
. He also began teaching life drawing at Westminster School of Art
Westminster School of Art
The Westminster School of Art was an art school in Westminster, London. It was located at 18 Tufton Street, Deans Yard, Westminster, and was part of the old Architectural Museum.H. M. Bateman described it in 1903 as...
where he met painter Maeve Gilmore
Maeve Gilmore
Maeve Patricia Mary Theresa Gilmore, known professionally as Maeve Gilmore was a British painter, sculptor, and writer.- Personal background :...
, whom he married in 1937. They had three children, Sebastian (b. 1940), Fabian (b. 1942), and Clare (b. 1949).
He had a very successful exhibition of paintings at the Calmann Gallery in London in 1938 and his first book, the self-illustrated children's pirate romance Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor
Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor
Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor is a darkly humorous children's picture book written and illustrated by the British author Mervyn Peake and published by Country Life in 1939. It was his first published work. The story concerns the nautical exploits of the titular captain and his rambunctious...
(based on a story he had written around 1936) was first published in 1939 by Country Life. In December 1939 he was commissioned by Chatto & Windus to illustrate a children's book, Ride a Cock Horse and Other Nursery Rhymes, published for the Christmas market in 1940.
Enlistment
At the outbreak of World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
he applied to become a war artist
War artist
A war artist depicts some aspect of war through art; this might be a pictorial record or it might commemorate how "war shapes lives." War artists have explored a visual and sensory dimension of war which is often absent in written histories or other accounts of warfare.- Definition and context:A...
for he was keen to put his skills at the service of his country. He imagined An Exhibition by the Artist, Adolf Hitler, in which horrific images of war with ironic titles were offered as 'artworks' by the Nazi leader. Although the drawings were bought by the British Ministry of Information, his application was turned down and he was conscripted
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
in the Army, where he served first with the Royal Artillery, then with the Royal Engineers. He began writing Titus Groan at this time.
In April 1942, after his requests for commissions as a war artist - or even leave to depict war damage in London - had been consistently refused, he suffered a nervous breakdown and was sent to Southport Hospital. That autumn he was taken on as a graphic artist by the Ministry of Information for a period of six months. The next spring he was invalided out of the Army. In 1943 he was commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee to paint glassblowers
Glassblowing
Glassblowing is a glassforming technique that involves inflating molten glass into a bubble, or parison, with the aid of a blowpipe, or blow tube...
at a Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
factory making cathode ray tubes for the early radar sets. One of these paintings is on permanent display in Manchester Art Gallery.
Illustration and writing
The five years between 1943 and 1948 were some of the most productive of his career. He finished Titus Groan and Gormenghast and completed some of his most acclaimed illustrations for books by other authors, including Lewis CarrollLewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
's Hunting of the Snark (for which he was reportedly paid only £5) and Alice in Wonderland, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the Brothers Grimm
Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...
's Household Tales, All This and Bevin Too by Quentin Crisp
Quentin Crisp
Quentin Crisp , was an English writer and raconteur. He became a gay icon in the 1970s after publication of his memoir, The Naked Civil Servant.- Early life :...
and Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....
's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, as well as producing many original poems, drawings, and paintings.
Peake designed the logo for Pan Books
Pan Books
Pan Books is an imprint which first became active in the 1940s and is now part of the British-based Macmillan Publishers owned by German publishers, Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group....
. The publishers offered him either a flat fee of £10 or a royalty of one farthing per book. On the advice of Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
, who told him that paperback books were a passing fad that wouldn't last, Peake opted for the £10.
A book of nonsense poems, Rhymes Without Reason, was published in 1944 and was described by John Betjeman
John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...
as "outstanding". Shortly after the war ended in 1945 he was commissioned by a magazine to visit France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. With writer Tom Pocock
Tom Pocock
Thomas Allcot Guy Pocock, writing under the name Tom Pocock, was an English biographer, war correspondent, journalist and naval historian.-Life:...
he was among the first British civilians to witness the horrors of the Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
concentration camp at Belsen, where the remaining prisoners, too sick to be moved, were dying before his very eyes. He made several drawings, but not surprisingly he found the experience profoundly harrowing, and expressed in deeply felt poems the ambiguity of turning their suffering into art.
In 1946 the family moved to Sark
Sark
Sark is a small island in the Channel Islands in southwestern English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. It is a royal fief, geographically located in the Channel Islands in the Bailiwick of Guernsey, with its own set of laws based on Norman law and its own parliament. It has a population...
, where Peake continued to write and illustrate, and Maeve painted. Gormenghast
Gormenghast (novel)
Gormenghast, by Mervyn Peake, is the second novel in his Gormenghast series. It is the story of Titus Groan, 77th Earl of Groan and Lord of Gormenghast Castle, from age 7 to 17. As the story opens, Titus dreads the pre-ordained life of ritual that stretches before him...
was published in 1950, and the family moved back to England, settling in Smarden
Smarden
Smarden is a civil parish and village, west of Ashford in Kent, South East England.The village has The Church of St. Michael which because of its high scissor beam roof is sometimes known as "The Barn of Kent"....
, Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
. Peake taught part-time at the Central School of Art, began his comic novel Mr Pye, and renewed his interest in theatre. His father died that year and left his house in Hillside Gardens in Wallington
Wallington, London
Wallington is a town in the London Borough of Sutton situated south south-west of Charing Cross. Prior to the merger of the Municipal Borough of Beddington and Wallington into the London Borough of Sutton, it was part of the county of Surrey.- History :...
, Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
to Mervyn. Mr Pye
Mr Pye
-Plot:Mr. Pye travels to the Channel Island of Sark to awaken a love of God in all the islanders. His landlady on the island, Miss Dredger, quickly becomes a devout follower of his teachings. and even agrees to allow the person she hates the most, Miss George, to stay in her house. As Pye does good...
was published in 1953, and he later adapted it as a radio play. The BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
broadcast other plays of his in 1954 and 1956.
Later life
In 1956 Mervyn and Maeve visited SpainSpain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, financed by a friend who hoped that Peake's health, which was already declining, would be improved by the holiday. That year his novella Boy in Darkness
Boy in Darkness
Boy in Darkness is a horror novella written by Mervyn Peake. It was first published in 1956 by Eyre & Spottiswoode as part of the anthology Sometime, Never: Three Tales of Imagination...
was published beside stories by William Golding
William Golding
Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, best known for his novel Lord of the Flies...
and John Wyndham in a volume called Sometime, Never. On 18 December the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
broadcast his radio play The Eye of the Beholder (later revised as The Voice of One) in which an avante-garde artist is commissioned to paint a church mural. Peake placed much hope in his play The Wit To Woo which was finally staged in London's West End in 1957, but it was a critical and commercial failure. This affected him greatly – his health degenerated rapidly and he was again admitted to hospital with a nervous breakdown.
Declining health and death
He was showing unmistakable early symptoms of Parkinson's DiseaseParkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system...
, for which he was given electroconvulsive therapy
Electroconvulsive therapy
Electroconvulsive therapy , formerly known as electroshock, is a psychiatric treatment in which seizures are electrically induced in anesthetized patients for therapeutic effect. Its mode of action is unknown...
, to little avail. Over the next few years he gradually lost the ability to draw steadily and quickly, although he still managed to produce some drawings with the help of his wife. Among his last completed works were the illustrations for Balzac's Droll Stories (1961) and for his own poem The Rhyme Of The Flying Bomb (1962), which he had written some 15 years earlier.
Titus Alone
Titus Alone
Titus Alone is a novel written by Mervyn Peake and first published in 1959. It is the fourth work in the Gormenghast series. The other works in the series are Titus Groan, Gormenghast, the novella Boy in Darkness, and the fragment Titus Awakes.-Plot summary:The story follows Titus' journey in the...
was published in 1959 and was revised by Langdon Jones in 1970 to remove apparent inconsistencies introduced by the publisher's careless editing. A 1995 edition of all three completed Gormenghast novels includes a very short fragment of the beginning of what would have been the fourth Gormenghast novel, Titus Awakes
Titus Awakes
Titus Awakes is the editorial title applied to a novel being planned by Mervyn Peake at the time he became too ill to write, about 1960. It was to have been the fourth novel in the Gormenghast series, after Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone...
, as well as a listing of events and themes he wanted to address in that and later Gormenghast novels.
Death
In the late 1950s, while writing Titus Alone, Peake's health subsequently declined into physical and mental incapacitation, and he later died on November 17th 1968 at a care home run by his brother in law, at Burcot, near Oxford. He was buried in the churchyard of St Mary's in the village of BurphamBurpham
Burpham is a village and civil parish in the Arun District of West Sussex, England. The village is on an arm of the River Arun slightly less than northeast of Arundel.The civil parish has an area of...
, Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
.
His work, especially the Gormenghast series, became much better known and more widely appreciated after his death. They have since been translated into more than two dozen languages.
Publications
Six volumes of Peake's verse were published during his lifetime; Shapes & Sounds (1941), Rhymes without Reason 1944, The Glassblowers (1950), The Rhyme of the Flying BombThe Rhyme of the Flying Bomb
The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb is a narrative poem written by Mervyn Peake in 1947, and published with his felt-pen illustrations in 1962.A sailor wandering in London during a World War II air-raid finds a new-born baby in the debris. He takes refuge with the child in an empty church, where it...
(1962), Poems & Drawings (1965), and A Reverie of Bone (1967). After his death came Selected Poems (1972), followed by Peake's Progress in (1979 – though the Penguin edition of 1982, with many corrections, including a whole stanza inadvertently omitted from the hardback edition, is to be preferred). The Collected Poems of Mervyn Peake was published by Carcanet Press
Carcanet Press
Carcanet Press is a publisher, primarily of poetry, based in the United Kingdom and founded in 1969 by Michael Schmidt.Carcanet Press is now in its fourth decade. In 2000 it was named the Sunday Times millennium Small Publisher of the Year...
in June 2008. Other collections include The Drawings of Mervyn Peake (1974), Writings and Drawings (1974), and Mervyn Peake: the man and his art (2006). A collected edition of the works, issued to celebrate Peake's centenary year, has been announced for publication by Queen Anne Press
Queen Anne Press
The Queen Anne Press is a small private press. It was created in 1951 by Lord Kemsley, proprietor of the Sunday Times, to publish the works of comtemporary authors. In 1952, as a wedding present to his then Foreign Editor, Kemsley made Ian Fleming its managing director. The press concentrated on...
(2012).
Dramatic adaptations of Peake's work
In 1983, the Australian Broadcasting CorporationAustralian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
broadcast eight hour-long episodes for radio dramatising the complete Gormenghast Trilogy. This was the first to include the third book Titus Alone
Titus Alone
Titus Alone is a novel written by Mervyn Peake and first published in 1959. It is the fourth work in the Gormenghast series. The other works in the series are Titus Groan, Gormenghast, the novella Boy in Darkness, and the fragment Titus Awakes.-Plot summary:The story follows Titus' journey in the...
.
In 1984, BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
broadcast two 90-minute plays based on Titus Groan and Gormenghast
Gormenghast (novel)
Gormenghast, by Mervyn Peake, is the second novel in his Gormenghast series. It is the story of Titus Groan, 77th Earl of Groan and Lord of Gormenghast Castle, from age 7 to 17. As the story opens, Titus dreads the pre-ordained life of ritual that stretches before him...
, adapted by Brian Sibley
Brian Sibley
Brian Sibley is an English writer. He is author of over 100 hours of radio drama and has written and presented hundreds of radio documentaries, features and weekly programmes.- Early life :...
and starring Sting as Steerpike
Steerpike
Steerpike is a character in Mervyn Peake's novels Titus Groan and Gormenghast.In 2000 Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers portrayed Steerpike in the BBC miniseries Gormenghast.-Character:...
and Freddie Jones
Freddie Jones
Frederick Charles "Freddie" Jones is an English character actor.Jones was born in the town of Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, the son of Ida Elizabeth and Charles Edward Jones. He became an actor after ten years of working as a laboratory assistant with a firm making ceramic products,...
as the Artist (narrator). A slightly abridged compilation of the two, running to 160 minutes, and entitled Titus Groan of Gormenghast, was broadcast on Christmas Day, 1992. BBC 7
BBC 7
BBC Radio 4 Extra, formerly known as BBC 7 and BBC Radio 7, is a British digital radio station broadcasting comedy, drama, and children's programming nationally 24 hours a day. It is the principal broadcasting outlet for the BBC's archive of spoken-word entertainment...
repeated the original versions on 21 and 28 September 2003.
In 1986, Mr Pye was adapted as a four-part Channel 4 miniseries starring Derek Jacobi
Derek Jacobi
Sir Derek George Jacobi, CBE is an English actor and film director.A "forceful, commanding stage presence", Jacobi has enjoyed a highly successful stage career, appearing in such stage productions as Hamlet, Uncle Vanya, and Oedipus the King. He received a Tony Award for his performance in...
.
In 2000, the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
and WGBH Boston co-produced a lavish miniseries, titled Gormenghast, based on the first two books of the series. It starred Jonathan Rhys-Meyers
Jonathan Rhys-Meyers
Jonathan Rhys Meyers is an Irish actor and model.He is best known for his roles in the films Velvet Goldmine, Mission Impossible III, Bend It Like Beckham, Match Point and his television roles as Elvis Presley in the biographical miniseries Elvis, which earned him a Golden Globe for Best Actor,...
as Steerpike, Neve McIntosh
Neve McIntosh
-Early life:Born in Paisley, Neve McIntosh grew up in Edinburgh, where she attended Boroughmuir High School. She moved to Glasgow to attend the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, after which she was in repertory companies at Perth and at The Little Theatre on the Isle of Mull.-Theatre:She...
as Fuchsia, June Brown
June Brown
June Muriel Brown, MBE is a British actress, best known for her role as the busy-body, chain-smoking gossip Dot Cotton in the long-running British soap opera EastEnders and for making other high profile television appearances on shows such as Doctor Who, Coronation Street, Minder, The Bill and...
as Nannie Slagg, Ian Richardson
Ian Richardson
Ian William Richardson CBE was a Scottish actor best known for his portrayal of the Machiavellian Tory politician Francis Urquhart in the BBC's House of Cards trilogy. He was also a leading Shakespearean stage actor....
as Lord Groan, Christopher Lee
Christopher Lee
Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, CBE, CStJ is an English actor and musician. Lee initially portrayed villains and became famous for his role as Count Dracula in a string of Hammer Horror films...
as Flay, Richard Griffiths
Richard Griffiths
Richard Griffiths, OBE is an English actor of stage, film and television. He has received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Featured Actor and a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor...
as Swelter, Warren Mitchell
Warren Mitchell
Warren Mitchell is an English actor who rose to initial prominence in the role of bigoted cockney Alf Garnett in the BBC television sitcom Till Death Us Do Part , and its sequels Till Death... and In Sickness and in Health , all of which were written by Johnny Speight...
as Barquentine, Celia Imrie
Celia Imrie
Celia Diana Savile Imrie is an English actress. In a career starting in the early 1970s, Imrie has played Marianne Bellshade in Bergerac, Philippa Moorcroft in Dinnerladies, Miss Babs in Acorn Antiques, Diana Neal in After You've Gone and Gloria Millington in Kingdom...
as Countess Gertrude, Lynsey Baxter
Lynsey Baxter
Lynsey Baxter is an English actress. Born in London, she began as a child actress in 1974 and later trained at Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts...
and Zoë Wanamaker
Zoe Wanamaker
Zoë Wanamaker, CBE is an American-British actress. She has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company; in films, including the Harry Potter series; and in a number of television productions, including a long-time role as Susan Harper in the sitcom My Family.-Early life and family:Wanamaker was...
as the twins, Cora and Clarice, and John Sessions
John Sessions
John Gibb Marshall , better known by the stage name John Sessions, is a Scottish actor and comedian. He is known for comedy improvisation in television shows such as Whose Line Is It Anyway?; as a panellist on QI; and as a character actor in numerous films, both in the UK and in Hollywood.-Early...
as Dr Prunesquallor. The supporting cast included Olga Sosnovska
Olga Sosnovska
Olga Sosnovska is a Polish-born UK/US-based actress.-Career:Sosnovska is perhaps best known in America for her role as Polish businesswoman Lena Kundera on the soap opera All My Children...
, Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry
Stephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also...
and Eric Sykes
Eric Sykes
Eric Sykes, CBE is an English radio, television and film writer, actor and director whose performing career has spanned more than 50 years. He frequently wrote for and/or performed with many other leading comedy performers and writers of the period, including Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan, Peter...
and the series is also notable as the last screen performance by comedy legend Spike Milligan
Spike Milligan
Terence Alan Patrick Seán "Spike" Milligan Hon. KBE was a comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright, soldier and actor. His early life was spent in India, where he was born, but the majority of his working life was spent in the United Kingdom. He became an Irish citizen in 1962 after the...
(as the Headmaster).
A minimalist stage version of Gormenghast performed by the David Glass Ensemble was adapted by John Constable and directed by David Glass. The production features atmospheric music and lighting and relies heavily on mime, all to convey the immense vastness of the Gormenghast castle on the small stage. It toured theatres in the UK during 2006 and 2007.
A 30-minute TV short film A Boy In Darkness (also made in 2000 and adapted from Peake's novella) was the first production from the BBC Drama Lab. It was set in a 'virtual' computer-generated world created by young computer game designers, and starred Jack Ryder
Jack Ryder (actor)
Jack Seigfried Ryder is an English actor, best known for playing Jamie Mitchell in the BBC One soap opera EastEnders from 1998 to 2002.-Biography:...
(from EastEnders
EastEnders
EastEnders is a British television soap opera, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 19 February 1985 and continuing to today. EastEnders storylines examine the domestic and professional lives of the people who live and work in the fictional London Borough of Walford in the East End...
) as Titus, with Terry Jones
Terry Jones
Terence Graham Parry Jones is a Welsh comedian, screenwriter, actor, film director, children's author, popular historian, political commentator, and TV documentary host. He is best known as a member of the Monty Python comedy team....
(Monty Python's Flying Circus
Monty Python's Flying Circus
Monty Python’s Flying Circus is a BBC TV sketch comedy series. The shows were composed of surreality, risqué or innuendo-laden humour, sight gags and observational sketches without punchlines...
) narrating.
Irmin Schmidt
Irmin Schmidt
Irmin Schmidt is a German keyboard player and composer, probably best known as a founding member of the band Can.-Biography:...
, founder of seminal German 'Krautrock
Krautrock
Krautrock is a generic name for the experimental music scenes that appeared in Germany in the late 1960s and gained popularity throughout the 1970s, especially in Britain. The term is a result of the English-speaking world's reception of the music at the time and not a reference to any one...
' group Can
Can (band)
Can was an experimental rock band formed in Cologne, West Germany in 1968. Later labeled as one of the first "krautrock" groups, they transcended mainstream influences and incorporated strong minimalist and world music elements into their often psychedelic music.Can constructed their music largely...
wrote an opera called Gormenghast, based on the novels; it was first performed in Wuppertal, Germany, in November 1998. A number of early songs by New Zealand rock group Split Enz
Split Enz
Split Enz were a New Zealand band of the 1970s and early 1980s featuring Phil Judd and brothers Tim Finn and Neil Finn. They achieved chart success in New Zealand, Australia, and Canada during the early 1980s ‒ most notably with the single "I Got You", and built a cult following elsewhere...
were inspired by Peake's work. The song "The Drowning Man", by British band The Cure
The Cure
The Cure are an English rock band formed in Crawley, West Sussex in 1976. The band has experienced several line-up changes, with frontman, vocalist, guitarist and principal songwriter Robert Smith being the only constant member...
, is inspired by events in Gormenghast, and the song "Lady Fuchsia" by another British band, Strawbs, is also based on events in the novels.
Peake's play The Cave
The Cave (play)
The Cave is a play written by English novelist and artist Mervyn Peake in the mid 1950s. The play is a three-act drama, which takes place in one cave over three time periods; from the Neolithic period, through medieval to modern day or "the very near future".In one cave, thousands of years of...
, which dates from the mid-1950s, was given a first public reading at the Blue Elephant theatre
Blue Elephant Theatre
The Blue Elephant Theatre is a 50 seat fringe theatre situated in the borough of Southwark in London. It was established in 1999 by Antonio Ribeiro....
in Camberwell
Camberwell
Camberwell is a district of south London, England, and forms part of the London Borough of Southwark. It is a built-up inner city district located southeast of Charing Cross. To the west it has a boundary with the London Borough of Lambeth.-Toponymy:...
(London) in 2009, and had its world premiere in the same theatre, directed by Aaron Paterson, on 19th October 2010.
In 2011 Brian Sibley adapted the story again, this time as six one-hour episodes broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as the Classic Serial
Classic Serial
The Classic Serial is a strand on BBC Radio 4 in which classics of English literature are adapted into series of one-hour dramas. It is broadcast twice weekly on BBC Radio 4, first from 3:00-4:00pm on Sunday, then repeated on 9:00-10:00pm the next Saturday....
starting on 10 July 2011. The serial was titled "The History of Titus Groan" and adapted all three novels written by Mervyn Peake and the recently discovered concluding volume, "Titus Awakes
Titus Awakes
Titus Awakes is the editorial title applied to a novel being planned by Mervyn Peake at the time he became too ill to write, about 1960. It was to have been the fourth novel in the Gormenghast series, after Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone...
" completed by his widow, Maeve Gilmore
Maeve Gilmore
Maeve Patricia Mary Theresa Gilmore, known professionally as Maeve Gilmore was a British painter, sculptor, and writer.- Personal background :...
. It starred Luke Treadaway
Luke Treadaway
Luke Antony N. Treadaway is an English actor, whose career includes roles in the films Brothers of the Head and Attack the Block.- Personal life :...
as Titus, David Warner
David Warner
David Warner may refer to:* Dave Warner, or David Robert Warner, Australian author, rock musician and screenwriter* David Warner , British actor* David Warner , Australian cricketer* David Bruce Warner, South African alpine skier...
as the Artist and Carl Prekopp
Carl Prekopp
Carl Prekopp is a British actor. He played Richard III at the Riverside Studios and originated the part of Lawrence in Tim Firth's stage adaptation of Calendar Girls. He has appeared in BBC Radio 4 adaptations of Terry Pratchett's Mort , Small Gods and Night Watch...
as Steerpike. It also starred Paul Rhys
Paul Rhys
Paul Rhys is a British television, film and theatre actor.Rhys was born in Wales and studied at RADA, leaving with the Bancroft Gold Medal in 1987. While there, he obtained his first major screen role, in Absolute Beginners . Since then he has seldom been off the stage and screen...
, Miranda Richardson
Miranda Richardson
Miranda Jane Richardson is an English stage, film and television actor. She has been nominated for two Academy Awards, and has won two Golden Globes and a BAFTA during her career....
, James Fleet
James Fleet
James Edward Fleet is an English actor. He is most famous for his roles as the bumbling and well-meaning Tom in the 1994 British romantic comedy film Four Weddings and a Funeral, and the dim-witted Hugo Horton in the BBC situation comedy television series The Vicar of Dibley.-Personal life:Fleet...
, Tamsin Greig
Tamsin Greig
Tamsin Greig is an English actress principally known for two Channel 4 television comedy parts: Fran Katzenjammer in Black Books and Dr. Caroline Todd in Green Wing...
, Fenella Woolgar
Fenella Woolgar
Fenella Woolgar is an English actress. She graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1999 and has since appeared in several film, television and theatre productions. She also works as an audio book narrator and voice over artist...
, Adrian Scarborough
Adrian Scarborough
Adrian Philip Scarborough is an English character actor and won an Olivier award for best actor in a supporting role in 2011.Scarborough was born in Melton Mowbray, and trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, winning the Chesterton Award for Best Actor.In 1993, he was nominated for the Ian...
and Mark Benton
Mark Benton
Mark Benton is an English actor, perhaps most famous for his roles as Eddie in Early Doors and Howard in Northern Lights.-Life and career:Benton was born in Guisborough, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, England....
among others.
Illustrated books
- Captain Slaughterboard Drops AnchorCaptain Slaughterboard Drops AnchorCaptain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor is a darkly humorous children's picture book written and illustrated by the British author Mervyn Peake and published by Country Life in 1939. It was his first published work. The story concerns the nautical exploits of the titular captain and his rambunctious...
(by himself) (Country Life, 1939) - Ride a Cock Horse and Other Nursery Rhymes (Chatto & Windus, 1940)
- The Book of Lyonne (by Burgess Drake) (The Falcon Press, 1952)
- Hunting of the Snark (by Lewis CarrollLewis CarrollCharles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
) - Alice in Wonderland (by Lewis Carroll)
- The Rime of the Ancient MarinerThe Rime of the Ancient MarinerThe Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–98 and was published in 1798 in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. Modern editions use a later revised version printed in 1817 that featured a gloss...
(by Samuel Taylor ColeridgeSamuel Taylor ColeridgeSamuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
) - Household Tales (by the Brothers GrimmBrothers GrimmThe Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...
) - All This and Bevin Too (by Quentin CrispQuentin CrispQuentin Crisp , was an English writer and raconteur. He became a gay icon in the 1970s after publication of his memoir, The Naked Civil Servant.- Early life :...
) - Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (by Robert Louis StevensonRobert Louis StevensonRobert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....
) - Treasure IslandTreasure IslandTreasure Island is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of "pirates and buried gold". First published as a book on May 23, 1883, it was originally serialized in the children's magazine Young Folks between 1881–82 under the title Treasure Island; or, the...
(by Robert Louis StevensonRobert Louis StevensonRobert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....
) - Droll Stories (by Balzac) (Folio Society, 1961)
- The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb (by himself) (1962)
- Titus Groan, GormenghastGormenghast (novel)Gormenghast, by Mervyn Peake, is the second novel in his Gormenghast series. It is the story of Titus Groan, 77th Earl of Groan and Lord of Gormenghast Castle, from age 7 to 17. As the story opens, Titus dreads the pre-ordained life of ritual that stretches before him...
, and Titus AloneTitus AloneTitus Alone is a novel written by Mervyn Peake and first published in 1959. It is the fourth work in the Gormenghast series. The other works in the series are Titus Groan, Gormenghast, the novella Boy in Darkness, and the fragment Titus Awakes.-Plot summary:The story follows Titus' journey in the...
(by himself; several editions include an abundance of illustrations, on plates in the center and/or distributed through the text)
Quotes about Peake
- "Mervyn Peake is a finer poet than Edgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
, and he is therefore able to maintain his world of fantasy brilliantly through three novels. [The Gormenghast trilogy] is a very, very great work ... a classic of our age." — Robertson DaviesRobertson DaviesWilliam Robertson Davies, CC, OOnt, FRSC, FRSL was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies is variously said to have gladly accepted for himself...
- "[Peake's books] are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience." — C. S. LewisC. S. LewisClive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...
- "Fuchsia was my dream. This idea of the infinite, of the unreal, of the innocence dying..." — Robert SmithRobert Smith (musician)Robert James Smith is an English musician. He is the lead singer, guitar player and principal songwriter of the rock band The Cure, and its only constant member since its founding in 1976...
2003 (about the Peake character that inspired the early CureThe CureThe Cure are an English rock band formed in Crawley, West Sussex in 1976. The band has experienced several line-up changes, with frontman, vocalist, guitarist and principal songwriter Robert Smith being the only constant member...
song The Drowning Man in 1980)
General
- Winnington, G. Peter (ed.) (2006) Mervyn Peake: the man and his art. (London: Peter Owen)
- Winnington, G. Peter (2000) Vast Alchemies: the life and work of Mervyn Peake. Revised and enlarged in 2009 as Mervyn Peake's Vast Alchemies. (London: Peter Owen)
- Winnington, G. Peter (2006) The Voice of the Heart: the working of Mervyn Peake's imagination. (Liverpool U P / Chicago U P)
- Peake, Mervyn (ca.1950) 'Notes towards a Projected Autobiography', printed in Maeve Gilmore (ed.), Peake's Progress: Selected Writings and Drawings of Mervyn Peake (London: Allen Lane, 1978)
External links
- Mervyn Peake, the official site
- Gormenghast, the official Gormenghast site
- the Peake entry in the Literary Encyclopedia
- The Scriptorium: Mervyn Peake
- "An Excellence of Peake", by Michael MoorcockMichael MoorcockMichael John Moorcock is an English writer, primarily of science fiction and fantasy, who has also published a number of literary novels....
- Gormenghast Castle
- Self-portrait from the National Portrait Gallery collection
- Peake Studies, the periodical dedicated to Peake's life and work, with a complete Peake bibliography