Mervyn Peake: The Literary and Artistic Life
A World Away, and A Child of Bliss
In 2008 my wife and I organised the first Stratford-upon-Avon International Festival of Literature. Sebastian Peake was one of our guests; a charming man who spoke lovingly, and in depth, about his father, the writer and artist Mervyn Peake, and his mother, the artist Maeve Gilmore.
Sebastian’s memoir, A Child of Bliss, and Maeve Gilmore’s own memoir of her life with Mervyn, A World Away, seems, for me, something of a reiteration of Mervyn Peake’s own nature, even when suffering so badly toward the end of his life.
Perhaps still best known today for his Gormenghast trilogy, Mervyn Peake was a writer of such depth and sensibility that his other writings, most notably his short stories, often outshine those three award winning novels; he was also an artist of such originality that it is virtually impossible to place him into a particular genre.
In a recent edition of The Spectator, the classicist and cultural critic, Dr Daisy Dunn wrote:
“ To be a good illustrator, said Mervyn Peake, it is necessary to do two things. The first is to subordinate yourself entirely to the book. The second is ‘to slide into another man’s soul.’
“ In 1933, at the age of 22, Peake did precisely that. Relinquishing his studies at…
