Mervyn Peake's Vast Alchemies

This is a new edition of Peter Winnington''s acclaimed biography of Mervyn Peake - ''by far the best biography of Peake and the closest to the reality that I perceived,'' declared Michael Moorcock.

First published in 2000, it was enlarged for publication as a paperback in 2009. This new edition contains fresh illustrations and additional information that has come to light since then.

Peter Winnington recounts Peake''s life from his birth in China, through his student years in England and a stay in an artists'' colony on Sark, followed by his marriage and his frustrating years as a soldier when he wished to be a war artist. Yet the 1940s, marked by a visit to the newly liberated camp at Bergen-Belsen in 1945, were his most productive years: he made drawings, paintings, and illustrations, and wrote poems and novels. In the 1950s, he stared writing plays - one of them was put on in London - but Parkinson''s disease gradually robbed him of his ability to write, paint, or draw, and caused his premature death in 1968.

Peake wrote three novels and a novella about the life of Titus Groan and his childhood in the city-sized - but almost deserted - castle of Gormenghast (whose name, along with that of the villain, Steerpike, has become a by-word of English literature). He produced more than 250 poems, over a dozen plays, and illustrated many books; his Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Alice in Wonderland and Treasure Island are among his most famous achievements.