Titus Groan status of the Ladies Clarice and Cora has fallen as he draws them into his power. Pellet: Servant in the Prunesquallors' household. He is replaced by Steerpike at the instigation of Irma Prunesquallor. Shrattle: Armourer. Holds the only key to Groan armoury. In 1984, BBC Radio 4 broadcast two 90-minute plays based on "Titus Groan" and "Gormenghast", adapted by Brian Sibley and starring Sting as Steerpike and Freddie Jones as the Artist (narrator). A slightly abridged compilation of the two, running to 160 minutes, and entitled "Titus Groan of Gormenghast", was broadcast on Christmas Day, 1992. BBC 7 repeated the
Mervyn Peake Republic of China. His father Ernest Cromwell Peake was a medical missionary doctor with the London Missionary Society of the Congregationalist tradition and his mother, Amanda Elizabeth Powell, had come to China as a missionary assistant. The Peakes were given leave to visit England just before World War I in 1914 and returned to China in 1916. Mervyn Peake attended Tientsin Grammar School until the family left for England in December 1922 via the Trans-Siberian Railway. About this time he wrote a novella, "The White Chief of the Umzimbooboo Kaffirs". Peake never returned to China but it has been noted