Reviews for The Cave

The well known journalist and presenter of Radio 4's Midweek, Libby Purves was at The Blue Elephant Theatre in Camberwell, on 21st October, to attend the press night of The Cave. Other write-ups follow, and there have been several on the internet all of which I'm sure my late father would have been delighted with.
Katie Shellard writes for Running Heels.
From Broadway World
Victoria Claringbold writes in London Theatre Reviews
Caroline Jowett writes in The Express.
Paul Vale writes in The Stage
Stewart Pringle writes in What's on Stage
Sandra Girogetti writes in The British Theatre Guide
Barbara Lewis writes in London Grip
Victoria Claringbold writes in Theatre Reviews London

The Wellcome Collection

Advertised as 'A Free Destination for the Incurably Curious', the Wellcome Collection will be opening its latest exhibition, High Society - Mind Altering Drugs in History & Culture, on November 11th. Using Mervyn Peake's illustration of the caterpillar from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as motif, the character sitting on top of a mushroom smoking a hookah, will be seen on posters both large and small in 50 central London underground stations until February next year.

The Wellcome Collection is at 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE. Telephone 020 7611 2222 for details

British Library talk

The Friends of the British Library have asked me to give a talk on my father to an invited audience on November 4th. A small selection of work chosen from the recently acquired archive will be displayed, and includes the above drawing.

RIP Claire Rayner

Asked on BBC Radio Four to name her favourite poem, Claire Rayner, who died today, said that it was Mervyn Peake's To Live at all is Miracle Enough which to her summed up what life was all about.

The Cave, at The Blue Elephant Theatre

Taken from The London Word, Nicole Rapaport talks to Jasmine Cullingford of the Blue Elephant Theatre who gives a timely plug to the forthcoming play which opens on 19th October.

Peake's Progress

In June 2011, British Library Publishing will be bringing out a new edition of Peake's Progress. The book, which first appeared in the 1970's, was edited by my late mother, Maeve Gilmore.

The publisher has chosen for the front cover, an evocative drawing taken from the 1940 Chatto & Windus edition of Ride a Cock Horse, a collection of nursery rhymes illustrated by my father. An elderly sage sits atop a rock stack, the formation of which is likely to have been inspired by similar granite shapes to be found around the coast of Sark where my father lived between 1933-1935. In the distance, behind the central figure, rugged mountains can be seen, reminders of the horizon my father would have been familiar with as he grew up in China.