Mervyn Peake The serial was titled "The History of Titus Groan" and adapted all three novels written by Mervyn Peake and the recently discovered concluding volume, "Titus Awakes" completed by his widow, Maeve Gilmore. It starred Luke Treadaway as Titus, David Warner as the Artist and Carl Prekopp as Steerpike. It also starred Paul Rhys, Miranda Richardson, James Fleet, Tamsin Greig, Fenella Woolgar, Adrian Scarborough and Mark Benton among others. Sting owned the film rights to the "Gormenghast" novels for a brief period in the 1980s, during which he discussed the possibility of adapting the novels into a series of concept albums,
Barquentine (Gormenghast) Barquentine (Gormenghast) Barquentine is a fictional character in Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series. He is the son of Sourdust, the Master of Ritual of Gormenghast castle. He is a one-legged, hunchbacked dwarf with a bitter, vicious personality; he never washes, he dresses in filthy rags, and his hair and beard are long, tangled, and dirty. He is frequently taunted by the castle's children, who sing "Rotten leg, rotten spine - ya! ya! Barquentine!" When he appears in the first book, Barquentine is 74 years old, and lives a hermitic existence in an obscure tract of the castle. He takes on the