The Worcester Literary Festival

Comments from the Worcester Literary Festival include much about Mervyn Peake.

Gormenghast in Covent Garden

The long awaited Blackshaw Theatre production will take place in April at this renowned church in central London.

The Fisherman's Hands

A keen-eyed reader of the Guernsey Press has sent in this cutting.

In The Guardian, 24th February 2012

John Mullan, on ten of the best owls.

Andrea Clarke's choice in today's Observer

Taken from the new British Library publication, Love Letters: 2000 Years of Romance, a letter written by my father to my mother, Maeve Gilmore, as published in today's Observer.

And in another review in The Economist it suggests that, '...the pen is mightier (or at least more seductive) than the txt. Rare are those' it continues, 'who pick up (as Mervyn Peake did) a pen to declare I am in love'.

British Library edition of Household Tales

The beautiful new British Library edition of Household Tales by the Brother's Grimm, brings back to sparkling life the 1946 edition in which my father's illustrations to the classic first appeared.

Writing in the introduction to the publication, Sarah Waters suggests that... 'Peake's essentially Gothic imagination made him an ideal interpreter of the stories collected by the Grimms'.... and that 'Peake's art brings these stories to life in all their power, strangeness and beauty. For me', she continues 'the Grimm's tales will always be at their best when accompanied by the pictures of Mervyn Peake'.

Congratulations to Brian Sibley

At the 2011 BBC Radio Awards ceremony, held this evening, 29th January, Brian Sibley's wonderful adaptation, The History of Titus Groan was voted the winner.

Michael Wood in The London Review of Books

In the current edition of The London Review of Books, Michael Wood reviews several new editions which have appeared recently. These include The Illustrated Gormenghast, Peake's Progress, A Book of Nonsense and others. The reviewer seems particularly struck by Boy in Darkness which he sees as anticipating much of what will be later inhabit the world of Gormenghast.

'Although the boy (in the story) is not named', Wood writes, 'it is normally assumed to be Titus Groan because he has run away from a castle, the site of much senseless and ancient ritual'. In a highly perceptive article, Wood brings the disparate artistic canvas that is now accepted as the wider art of Mervyn Peake, into as near to homogeneity as is possible in a review of three thousand words. In his section of my mother's Titus Awakes; not so much 'a continuation' more a homage to both the eponymous magnum opus and the man she loved, Wood writes glowingly and with real insight. 'A childhood in Gormenghast will render a person incapable of distinguishing freedom from anarchy. This is precisely what (Gilmore) captures so well in Titus Awakes.'

A L Kennedy in The Scotman

In Writer's Choice, a subsection of the books page of the The Scotsman, A L Kennedy suggests that '(Peake) brings together all his comic, fantastic and nonsensical verse. The pieces are full of a fastidious author's joy in the sheer music of language, shot through with the sensitivity, melancholy and savage realism that sings in all his work...'

Poems by Fabian Peake

Poetry online written by Fabian Peake sees the modern world very much from a painter's point of view, as the accompanying text makes clear. Following in his father's footsteps, Fabian articulates the inarticulate brilliantly, while he takes the reader on a visual journey through a maze of mirages that make up our lives.

From Five poems over five days (23–27 January 2012) courtesy of Akerman Daly

That Light
Woodcock
it took time for the green