Quay Arts Centre, Isle of Wight, 19th September

On Friday 19th September at 8.00 pm I'll be speaking at the Quay Arts Centre, Sea Street, Newport, Isle of Wight PO30 5BD. This is the island's leading art gallery and live arts venue.

For further information call 01983 822490

Bindman Lectures, Dove Cottage, 30th August

On Saturday 30th August at 3.00 pm I will be speaking in The Reading Room, Jerwood Centre, Dove Cottage, Cumbria as part of the annual Bindman Lectures. For further information contact www.wordsworth.org.uk or call 01539 463527

The New York Univeristy, Paris, 4th July

On the occasion of the 20th Paris Writers’ Workshop, I will speak at the New York University in Paris. Beginning at 7.00 pm, I’ll discuss my father's life and work, and also show clips from various television films. For further information see www.pariswritersworkshop.org

Nonsense Verse in New York

The New Amsterdam Choir, a New York ensemble, will be singing music especially composed by Richard Rodney Bennett for a recital in May of Mervyn Peake's nonsense verse. Describing A Book of Nonsense as the funniest verse she'd ever read the conductor will be presenting this debut evening at a New York concert hall.

The Collected Poems of Mervyn Peake - publication date, June 2008

The publication in June of the long awaited Collected Poems of Mervyn Peake from Carcanet Press, will be one of the most exciting and eagerly anticipated events of recent times, especially as the edition will include over 40 previously unseen drawings. With as disparate a range of subjects as love and war, grief loneliness and heartbreak, humour will not be missing from the wide artistic canon which made up Mervyn Peake's output. The collection will lay before the reader emotions covering the broadest span of human experience, exposing both observation and philosophy, sensitivity and intuition with a clarity inherent in the work of this poet and writer, illustrator, artist and thinker.

The Titus Trilogy on CD

Edmund Dehn, the accomplished actor who took on and succeeded magnificently, in the Herculean task of reading the whole trilogy on audiotape, will again be recording the novels, this time on CD. Titus Groan will be released towards the end of 2008 with the other titles available at three month intervals thereafter.

The Mervyn Peake Awards

The idea of an annual award to celebrate the work of Mervyn Peake, who suffered from Parkinson's disease, was given the go-ahead in 2001 by the then chief executive of the Parkinson's Disease Society. Despite the severe constrictions limiting his own work, my father continued working on commissions so the idea was to encourage others to emulate his bravery. There are three categories; art, photography, and poetry, with the winner in each section recognised with a prize, an exhibition, and press write-ups. The winner in the 2007 art section was Charlotte Johnson-Wahl, Boris Johnson's mother, who produced an evocative and highly original painting of a busy London street scene.

Mervyn Peake on BBC 4 The Worlds of Fantasy

"The Worlds of Fantasy" shown on BBC4 last night is available on the BBC iPlayer for six days. The section on Mervyn Peake starts about 35mins into the programme.

The documentary series about fantasy fiction tells how, in the 1950s, JRR Tolkien and Mervyn Peake created texts that revolutionised and popularised the genre.

CLick here to watch the iPlayer