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!
News
Boy in Darkness Theatre Production
Press Release
Gareth Murphy intertwines storytelling and physical theatre in a bold new one-man stage interpretation of Mervyn Peake's novella 'Boy in Darkness'.
A gothic adventure from the teenage years of Titus Groan, hero of the celebrated Gormenghast trilogy, Boy in Darkness is underpinned by Peake's rich and powerful language as it details the Boy’s escape from the oppressive Castle and the danger he subsequently encounters.
The Blue Elephant continues to bring the work of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers to the stage with this original adaptation, following the world stage premieres of Mervyn Peake's plays The Cave and Noah's Ark.
"But it is extraordinary: a howl, an imperfect and painful philosophical struggle, part of a remarkable artist's testament. Honour to the little theatre."
-- Libby Purves, The Times on The Cave
Dates: Wednesday 11 March – Saturday 4 April (Wednesdays to Saturdays only)
Time: 8pm
Tickets: £12.50 (£10.00 conc. & £8.50 Southwark residents)
Venue: Blue Elephant Theatre, 59a Bethwin Rd, Camberwell, SE5 0XT (entrance on Thompson Ave)
Nearest tube: Oval (Northern Line)
Wheelchair accessible
Box Office: 020 7701 0100
Website:http://www.blueelephanttheatre.co.uk
Email: info@blueelephanttheatre.co.uk
Twitter: @BETCamberwell
Zoë Wanamaker in Stevie at the Chicester Festival Theatre
Zoë Wanamaker played Cora (or was it Clarice? [1]) in the 2000 television production of Gormenghast.
Chichester Festival Theatre, is presenting Hugh Whitemore's award-winning play, Stevie based on the life of poet Stevie Smith with Zoë Wanamaker in the title role and Lynda Baron and Chris Larkin completing the cast. Stevie plays in the Minerva Theatre from 24 April - 24 May 2014
[1]It was Cora.
"Gormenghast" Play, by the Carabosse Theatre Company
The Carabosse Theatre Company of Milton Keynes have procurred the rights to adapt the first two books of the trilogy into a stage play, to be performed in October, 2014.
Tickets are now available online.
Affecting Perception: the poetry and art of Mervyn Peake
Poetry reading by Fabian Peake
As part of the Affecting Perception: Art & Neuroscience event (an exploration of art, neurological disease, creativity and the neural basis of visual perception), which ran from 2nd to the 31st March, 2013 in Oxford, UK, there was a poetry reading event by Fabian Peake.
Mervyn Peake, famed for his illustrations of the Alice in Wonderland and his Gormenghast Trilogy, suffered from dementia with Lewy Bodies. His son Fabian will take us into the wonderful world of Mervyn Peake with a reading of his father's poetry and a discussion about his art, literature and later illness.
For information about other events, visit the main website of the ANXS Collective.
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:
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".
BBC Series
For my own reactions to the BBC series, read the following pages:
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: