Mervyn Peake (Jiujiang 1911-1968 Burcot)

The writer, artist, poet and illustrator, Mervyn Peake first made his reputation as a painter and illustrator in the 1930s and 1940s in London. He moved to the Channel Island of Sark in 1933, where his former teacher Eric Drake was setting up an artists' colony. He would later exhibit with the Sark artists both in the Sark Gallery built by Drake and at the Cooling Galleries in London. Although Peake gained little popular success in his lifetime, his work was highly respected by his peers, and he counted Dylan Thomas and Graham Greene among his friends. He was celebrated for his Gormenghast series of books, and his self-illustrated children's pirate romance Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor. Examples of his work are held in National Portrait Gallery, and the Imperial War Museum.