Gloomsbury

[Nick Armstrong]

Mervyn Peake is much neglected and Ghormenghast is desperately needing to be rediscovered.

The BBC did a pretty good job with this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gormenghast-.../dp/B00004S322

[Flay]

but any way, I'm delighted to find somebody who knows it exists and between you and me its a great read.

There are more than two of you!

The first paragraph of Titus Groan sets the scene with most powerful prose:

Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth, each one half way over its neighbour until, held back by the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted this chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.

The highlighted sentence is my favourite.

Each character is vividly evoked. In particular, Flay , and I do like the short chapter on Swelter, the corpulent chef as he sinks into inebriated oblivion in front of his shocked scullions.

[teamsaint]

The BBC did a pretty good job with this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gormenghast-.../dp/B00004S322

The whole series was available on youtube not long ago.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The BBC did a pretty good job with this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gormenghast-.../dp/B00004S322

(Spike Milligan's final appearance, IIRC) Hard to believe that that was fifteen years ago. Two radio 4 adaptations in (my) living memory, too; both by Brian Sibley - one from 1984 (with Sting as Steerpike - my introduction to the work, having heard scattered mentions of it as a teenager) and 2011.

And there's also this:

http://www.mervynpeake.org/gormenghast/

[Steerpike]

"I would say, if I was pressed on the matter, that Mervyn Peake is much neglected and Ghormenghast is desperately needing to be rediscovered"

There were quite a few events and publications for Mervyn Peake's centenary in 2011 but since then things have gone quiet. The website http://www.mervynpeake.org/gormenghast/ is good but isn't kept up with events etc. It still asks you to contact Sebastian Peake for information, but he died in 2012.

Of course, everything might have gone better if I'd won the fight - bloomin' Titus.

Steerpike

[Nick Armstrong]

Flay

Steerpike

With the above two, the Forum does appear to be doing its best by M Peake's masterpiece.

However we stray from the OP!

[Steerpike]

Belgrove sometimes turns up too. But I expect he's at the dentist.

[Nick Armstrong]

Belgrove sometimes turns up too. But I expect he's at the dentist.

... I'd never made the connection! (perhaps because the Forumite of That Ilk lacks an 'l'...)

[Belgrove]

Belgrove sometimes turns up too. But I expect he's at the dentist.

Uncanny - having had my yearly check-up just this afternoon!

[Nick Armstrong]

Uncanny - having had my yearly check-up just this afternoon!

[Nick Armstrong]

Brand new series of Gloomsbury starting right now on Radio 4 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08ky5kn

Introducing randy politician Llewd George...