Mervyn Peake, British poet, artist and novelist best known for his Gormenghast books, drawing in the rubble of war ravaged Germany, June 1945. At the outbreak of the war, Peake applied to become a war artist. He was conscripted into the army, serving with the Royal Artillery and the Royal Engineers, but was never accepted as an official war artist with the British government. He did, however, serve in that capacity with smaller publications, visiting Germany and the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as war artist for the Leader magazine in 1945, and also working for a time as a graphic artist with the Ministry of Information.
