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Gormenghast

dotWelcome

About this castle

Welcome to an unofficial Gormenghast site, dedicated to Mervyn Peake's 'Titus Groan' trilogy, and to the BBC series, 'Gormenghast' (based on the first two books of the trilogy).

Although this site is primarily dedicated to the books, there is as much information here about the BBC series as I can find, including some photos. Most of the photos and information about the series will be found on the "Cast" pages. If you want a quick list of the cast, click here.

If you want to find other people who are also interested in the books or the series, try the Yahoo! Gormenghast club.

Of course, you could also visit this site's own message board!

dotNews

Official 'Mervyn Peake' Site

Make sure you visit the official Mervyn Peake site, and in particular the newly launched Gormenghast section, which includes extracts from the books, and Mervyn Peake's own illustrations of the characters. Of course, the whole site is well worth a look. You will find it here:

Gormenghast On Stage

The David Glass Ensemble is taking its stage production of Gormenghast round the UK in May and June. If you want to know more, and want to find out if it is coming to a theatre near you, check out their website:

Sculptures

One of the talented visitors to the message board has been working on some excellent sculptures of the main characters from the books, and I now have a page (or pages!) of photos of these.

Gormenghast on DVD and Video

The video/DVD is still available in America, from Amazon.com. The following links will take you there.

It is also, of course, available from Amazon UK:

Books

Perhaps not surprisingly, in the wake of the BBC series and the interest (however mild) that it stirred up about Peake, a number of previously out-of-print works have been republished.

Amongst the new publications are The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll, with illustrations by Mervyn Peake, and similarly Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson, again with Peake's illustrations.

Even more promisingly, Mr Pye is now available, having been very hard to find for many years (you could occasionally track down a copy in a library or, if you were very lucky, in a second-hand bookshop).

In the light of all this I have now set up a Gormenghast Castle Bookshop, in association with Amazon, where you can look up and buy these books.

Screen Saver

I have created a Gormenghast screen-saver. If you want to download it, go to the following page:

Web Ring

Langdon Jones has started a " Mervyn Peake" web-ring, to which this site belongs. Go to the bottom of this page to find the navigation bar for the web-ring.

Fragments

If you have ever wondered what might have happened after the end of the published books, I now have a small fragment of what was intended to be the beginning of the next book in the series.

Also, Michael Moorcock has kindly supplied me with some of Peake's work which originally appeared in New Worlds magazine. These include a New Worlds cover (with an illustration for Harlan Ellisons' "A Boy And His Dog") and (hand-written) extracts and illustrations from an otherwise unpublished work by Peake, "The Adventures of Foot-Fruit".

dotBBC Series

For my own reactions to the BBC series, read the following pages:

dotWhispers

Andy Wilson, the director of the Gormenghast BBC series, is currently working on a movie called Pendragon, the Celtic King Arthur story, based on the Welsh stories.

Castle Bran

The castle pictured at the top of this page is actually Castle Bran (popularly, if erroneously, known as Dracula's Castle) in Romania. I've used it because it looks very much like my own idea of Gormenghast, as indeed do many of the Romanian castles. If you would like to know more about this and other Romanian castles, the following site is an excellent place to visit: