Newsletter July 2020

Realm of Chaos original drawings

Ian Miller produced some of the very first images for Realm of Chaos when he was working with Games Workshop back in the 80's. How is it that these have been hiding in his plan chest for so long? There's now a good handful of them for sale.

We've also added a few more of John's sketches to the website and they're going fast.

In the mean time, Jim Burns has produced the inside illustrations for the centenary edition of 1984, for Suntup Press. The rather delicate pencil style, digitally coloured, may come as a surprise but that's Jim. It was an excellent choice, and they perfectly suit this very special book. I understand that the special edition sold out as soon as it was launched, but you can see a couple of the illustrations here, and it may be that at a later date he makes some of the original drawings available for sale.

The British Library has just acquired Mervyn Peake's visual archive and that includes the most spectacular portraits of many of the characters from Gormenghast as well as many other treasures. Letters from a Lost Uncle, Household Tales, Treasure Island. It surely is the most wonderful addition to their archive.

Oddly enough, the castle of Gormenghast, so beautifully described in words in the books, was hardly drawn at all by Peake but, of course, has inspired many other artists since then. Ian Miller, in particular, is known for his images of the castle clinging to the side of the mountain, his Hall of Bright Carvings, and most poignant, Cora and Clarice on the tree which grows through the castle walls.

Here are some examples - and we also offer prints of these, amongst many.