Beautifully written memoir of Maeve Gilmore's time with her husband Mervyn Peake, before his early death from Parkinson's disease. Peake is one of my absolute favourite writers, but his wife - an accomplished artist in her own right - is certainly no slouch with words either. And this memoir, which seems constructed more as a series of loose memories strung together (often with months or years between them) than a typical narrative, is deeply affecting. It gives the picture of a somewhat nomadic family - money was never very plentiful, as might be expected with two artists trying to scrape a living together with three kids in tow - but the moves between Sark and London, between suburbia and army camps, seem in a way less present than the image of home as a place filled with paintings and paper, endless drafts and sketches everywhere.

Most affecting, I think, is the telling of the failure of Peake's play The Wit To Woo, which was, after a period of many years, first staged while he was in the early period of his disease. Gilmore presents the play as a symbol of hope, almost, that Peake was clinging to at the time, and its disastrous outcome both mirrors and shadows his descent into premature senility. It's just so awful to read, knowing as I did the outcome in advance... and, to be honest, having read the play recently I can't bring myself to blame the critics. It's just not very good, but that a mind and talent like Peake's was doomed to end in disappointment and incapacity is like a small and terrible tragedy in itself - and this memoir, short and perfectly shaped as it is, relays this all too clearly.