Peake, Mervyn Laurence

(1911-1968)

   The author of the Gormenghast books, he was born at Kuling, China, the son of a missionary doctor. He studied art at the Royal Academy Schools, then spent two years in an artist's commune on the Channel Island of Sark. From 1935 to 1939 he taught life drawing at Westminster School of Art. During the war he was a sapper in bomb disposal, was invalided out in 1943, then employed in the Ministry of Information. In 1945 he went to Belsen Concentration Camp as a war artist to record the atrocities and conditions. After another three years on Sark with his family, he took a part-time teaching post at the Central School of Art, Holborn, London. He was often in demand as a book illustrator and as a portrait painter. By 1960 he gave up teaching, suffering from Parkinson's, and died at Burcot, Berkshire. His poetry collections published during his life: The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb, 1962. Poems and Drawings, 1965. A Reverie of Bone and Other Poems, 1967. Three of his poems: "I cannot give the reasons," "My Uncle Paul of Pimlico," "The Frivolous Cake."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Mervyn Peake's Official Website (http://www.mervynpeake.org/). Once Upon a Rhyme: 101 Poems for Young Children. Sara Corrin and Stephen Corrin, eds. Faber and Faber, 1982. Splinters: A Book of Very Short Poems. Michael Harrison, ed. Oxford University Press, 1989. The Chatto Book of Nonsense Poetry, Anthology Editor, Hugh Haughton, Chatto and Windus (1988). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Faber Book of War Poetry. Kenneth Baker, ed. Faber and Faber, 1996. The National Portrait Gallery (www. npg.org.uk). The New Oxford Book of Children's Verse. Neil Philip, ed. Oxford University Press, 1996. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).