The Peake Family

Maeve Gilmore

1918 – 1983

The youngest of six, Maeve, like Mervyn, had a medical doctor for a father and was brought up at a large house in Acre Lane , Brixton, South London , where her father had his practice. So-called, as at the time all the houses were surrounded by an acre of land, the family later moved across the river to Chelsea Square from where after convent boarding school at St Leonards on Sea, Sussex, she attended a finishing school in Switzerland . Here she learnt to speak fluent German and French and became a good pianist; her favourite music being that of Johann Sebastian Bach whose piano pieces would resound around the many houses she lived in after marrying Mervyn Peake. A fine painter and sculptor in her own right she also wrote several short stories, and had numerous one-woman exhibitions in London before dedicating her life to the well-being and support of her husband, following the onset of his illnesses. She would paint every day in her studio where the cat would sit watching as the canvases developed into works of art which, following her husband’s death in 1968, often emitted a powerful sense of injustice. Her memoir, A World Away, is often cited as one of the most poignant insights into marriage, life, and the joie de vivre of early life with a genius ever written, and remains in print decades after first being published.

Children

Sebastian Peake, born in 1940, has worked in various branches of the wine trade for most of his life, although after leaving school he studied foreign languages for five years while travelling around different European countries. He studied drums for a year in the late 1950s with the then leading modern jazz drummer in the country, and visited the wonderful annual Antibes Jazz Festival in 1963 where, during a break in the performance, he managed to persuade Miles Davis to join him and his Swedish girlfriend in a bottle of Provence rosé. In 1964 he was the drummer in the trio whose pianist came second in the National Young Pianist of the Year competition - the award being presented by Dave Brubeck, who gave a warm, encouraging speech. Jazz remains a lifelong love of his, but a penchant for the great wines of Bordeaux runs neck and neck. The promoting of his father’s work really accelerated after his mother’s death in 1983 when, in the first of what are now regular speaking events, he addressed the English faculty at the University of Krakow. Since then he has been speaking at literary festivals, bookshops, private gatherings, schools and universities both at home and abroad.

Fabian Peake is a painter and poet. He has had several collection of his poems published and held many one-man exhibitions both in Britain and abroad displaying his highly evocative and original painting. He taught at the fine art department of Manchester Metropolitan University for over thirty years where he was a popular and admired senior lecturer.

Clare Penate, Mervyn and Maeve’s daughter can technically call herself Sarkese having been born on the island and is one of a very small number of people who 
could actually purchase property on the island. She has recently completed a work on her parents life together as seen from her perspective given that she is much younger than her brothers. Mother of the singing star Jack Penate, she plays an active part in the promotion of her father’s work.

 

http://www.mervynpeake.org/biography.html