A new exhibition celebrates the centenary of Mervyn Peake’s birth. DAVID WHETSTONE talked to Sebastian Peake about his multi-talented father

IF Mervyn Peake hadn’t been able to draw for toffee, it’s likely that the centenary of his birth would have been celebrated with just as much enthusiasm. He was a brilliant writer, as you will know if you have ever read his three famous novels set in the huge and grim castle of Gormenghast – Titus Groan (published in 1946), Gormenghast (1950) and Titus Alone (1959).

Snippets of this can be seen in the exhibition which opened at the weekend at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle.

Beneath a drawing of Abiatha Swelter, the monumentally obese chef of Gormenghast, is Peake’s description of him as he “wades in a slug-like illness of fat through the humid ground mists of the Great Kitchen”.

Then there’s the girl, Fuchsia, enigmatic and oddly tantalising.

In Peake’s words: “She was gauche in movement and in a sense ugly of face, but with how small a twist might she not suddenly have become beautiful.” But Peake, who was born in China to missionary parents, was better known during his lifetime for his illustrations and it is these you will see in Lines of Flight: Mervyn Peake, the Illustrated Work.

The exhibition features Peake’s illustrations of his own writing, including his first book, Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor (published in 1939), his novel Mr Pye (1953) and, of course, the famous Gormenghast epic with its cast of extraordinary characters.

Displayed alongside this are his illustrations for the work of others, including Lewis Carroll, Robert Louis Stevenson and the Brothers Grimm.

Altogether they are a wonderful tribute to Peake’s twin talents and make his early death – in a care home in 1968, aged 57 – seem even more tragic.

Having suffered nervous breakdowns, Peake began to display the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and a rare condition known as encephalitis lethargica which impaired his ability to draw.

But one who has fond memories of the man in his prime is the older of Peake’s two sons, Sebastian, who opened the exhibition at the Laing and showed me around.

Sebastian Peake, a wine merchant, recalled his “idyllic” childhood on the Channel Island of Sark just after the war.

Mervyn Peake had gone there for a couple of years as a young man before the war to join a fledgling artists’ colony but then returned to London.

During the war he served for a couple of years in the Royal Artillery where his wish to become a war artist was ignored.

“He was called up and they gave him very silly jobs to do,” said Sebastian.