What makes Gormenghast a masterpiece? | Marcus Sedgwick

Mervyn Peake's gothic fantasy has never matched the success of JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Maybe it's just too good

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When I was 15, years before they'd even thought of having a book festival in Hay-on-Wye, I was hunting around the secondhand bookshops of that town for first editions of my new hero, Mervyn Peake. I was lucky enough to be helped by Richard Booth (the "King of Hay" himself), who remarked sadly that he didn't have any of the books in stock; that it was, in fact, the off-Peake season. The trouble is, it's always been the off-Peake season.

Why is it that the three books usually (and according to experts incorrectly) named the Gormenghast trilogy never achieved the level of success of that notable fantasy behemoth, The Lord of the Rings? I am not suggesting that the two works should be viewed as counterparts, and yet in very different ways they are two cornerstones of fantasy writing in the second half of the 20th century. One is universally known by anyone who's ever become a reader; I'm lucky if I find one person who has even heard of the other in any given audience of two hundred or more.

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