Gormenghast (series) for the rest of their life and that he felt it should be required reading in secondary schools. "The Daily Telegraph" has described Steerpike as one of the all-time greatest villains in western literature. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation produced a dramatization of all three Gormenghast novels. It was first broadcast in 1983 as eight one-hour episodes, and repeated in 1986 in four two-hour parts. This is the first adaptation that includes "Titus Alone" in addition to "Titus Groan" and "Gormenghast". In 1984, BBC Radio 4 broadcast two 90-minute plays based on "Titus Groan" and "Gormenghast", adapted by Brian Sibley and
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