Peake, Mervyn Laurence
Peake, Mervyn Laurence ( 1911 – 68 ),novelist, poet, and artist, born at Kuling in China, the son of a medical missionary; he came to England aged 11, was educated at Eltham College, Kent, then attended the Royal Academy Schools. He spent three years from 1934 with a group of artists on the island of Sark, then returned to London, where he taught art, exhibited his own work and illustrated books, published verse and stories for children, etc. He was invalided out of the army in 1943 after a nervous breakdown, but was later commissioned as a war artist, and also visited Belsen in 1945 on a journalistic expedition for the Leader, an experience which profoundly affected him. Meanwhile he was working on a novel, Titus Groan, which was published in 1946 ; it was followed by Gormenghast ( 1950 ) and Titus Alone ( 1959 ), which as a trilogy form the work for which Peake is best remembered, a...
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