![]() The effect told on his health and, for the last ten years of his life, he suffered from both depression and physical ill health. He turned to writing plays but had equally limited success. After it was turned down by Chatto and Windus, Graham Greene picked it up for Eyre and Spottiswoode but this work, like most of his subsequent works, had comparatively limited commercial success during his lifetime. During this period he wrote the first of the books in the Gormenghast Trilogy, Titus Groan. His wife maintains that this changed him substantially. He then became a war artist and visited Continental Europe, including Belsen. In 1942 he was called up by the army but was a very ineffectual soldier and was given an honourable discharge after a nervous breakdown. During this period he was painting and drawing, doing theatrical design and publishing his first book – a children’s story. He was subsequently offered a post at Westminster School of Art, where he taught part-time for the rest of his life and where he met Maeve Gilmore whom he married in 1936. ![]() ![]() In the 1930s he moved to Sark and retained his affection for the island all his life. The family returned to England in 1923 and, after school, Peake started studying art but also started writing verse. Mervyn Peake was born in 1911 in Kuling, China, where his parents were missionaries. ![]()
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