A true myth

By Robert Macfarlane

I found my way into Castle Gormenghast 20 years ago, and at times it feels as if I have never left. Nothing comes to an end in Mervyn Peake's fictional world—not even the reading of it. The great edifice in which his trilogy of novels is set seems limitless in its extent, and the memory-traces it leaves are indelible. Each of its dusty rooms opens onto yet another shadowed corridor or shuddering staircase. Time-eaten buttresses spiral into the sky. Seen from a high window, the castle's skyline presents a "panorama of roof-tops, towers and battlements". Its quadrangles are numberless, its bastions beyond count, and it is the demesne of an ancient dynasty of Earls, who prosecute its rituals and ensure their persistence ad infinitum.

Yes, Gormenghast is a vast "labyrinth of stone", in Peake's phrase—except that it has no centre, for there is always another chamber to reach or further annex to access. In this respect it is less a castle, more a city—and an infinite city at that. I grew up at the end of a country lane in the English Midlands, and it was in Peake's writing that I first sensed (fearfully, fascinatedly) what a city might feel like to inhabit.