Mervyn Peake and Maeve Gilmore

Most people know Mervyn Peake for his Gormenghast Trilogy, but few venture beyond those books to discover his talent for drawing and painting. He was an illustrator as well as a writer, bringing to life on paper the products of his extraordinary imagination. I would definitely recommend reading Letters from a Lost Uncle, a fantastically strange and often hilarious series of typed and illustrated 'letters' written by an Arctic explorer to his nephew. It is a work of genius.


I received a notification this morning of a new exhibition of some of the work of Mervyn Peake and his wife Maeve Gilmore, to be held from 9th July until 28th August at Viktor Wynd Fine Art in London. The gallery is associated with the Last Tuesday Society, which you should check out if you're a Londoner - pretty weird and interesting stuff to join in with, if that's your kind of thing.

Images courtesy of Viktor Wynd Fine Art, The Last Tuesday Society, and an unknown source (for the Letters image) on Flickr.

I am off to Italy tomorrow for a week, so it's goodbye until then. I hope to resume more regular blogging once I return - hopefully the work will ease off a bit for the summer and I can spend more time doing my own thing. Pigs might fly.

the weekend

We tried to relax this weekend and get away from thinking about all the things that have been bothering me these last few days. So we went picnicking at the seaside, this time at Frinton-on-Sea where they have the most amazing Modernist and Art Deco seafront houses. I mean, jaw-dropping white beauties like this one and this one, and there are loads of them. Whilst I am all for Georgian farmhouses for my own home, I can't help but wonder what it would be like to own something as stunning as those. I can just imagine the kind of decor I would like to use inside!

We also went to play on the helter skelter at cheesy Clacton-on-Sea, and to explore the site of special scientific interest at The Naze. The latter borders Hamford Water and the creeks and saltmarshes where Arthur Ransome set his Swallow and Amazons book, 'Secret Water'. Being the geek (here and here) that I am, I was pleased to at least have seen a part of it from a distance. We never quite made it to Hamford Water itself, but the sailboats that now navigate those waters were clearly visible from our walk on the sea wall.