A Child of Bliss/A World Away

It is impossible not to be moved by Maeve Gilmore's memoir of her husband... The personal story underlying the creation of Peake's works in prose, verse and pictorial line is both heartbreaking and idyllic... The moral of Maeve Gilmore's exquisite and poignant book is that life is hell, but we had better be grateful for the consolations of love and art -- Anthony Burgess * Spectactor *
Peake himself comes alive in this touching memoir [A World Away]... Written in love and pain, this book reaches back beyond the years of terrible illness... A love story as strangely haunting as the talent of the man himself * Evening Standard *
Mervyn Peake, artist and writer, whose haunted work opened windows on some the key horrors of the age, indeed of the ages, and whose own life was cut short by crippling nervous disease. His work was intensely, startlingly individual... When he died at 57, Sebastian records he had produced over 10,000 drawings and 200 oil paintings as well as his novels, poems and short stories... This is the story of a devoted family -- Norman Shrapnel * Guardian *