Mervyn moves into Mervyn's old house

Mervyn Davies, the man now running the good ship Standard Chartered, has bought a house in London that used to belong to Mervyn Peake. Mervyn Peake is a famous British author who wrote the Gormenghast Trilogy. This is a dark and satirical story about the attempts of the latest head of the Groan family to escape the mad rituals of the strange world of Gormenghast castle.

Apparently Mervyn Davies was finally persuaded to buy the house when he discovered that not only did he share a name with the former owner but also some geographic ties. Mervyn Peake was born in China in 1911. For the man running the Anglo-Asian Standard Chartered, that link was enough to persuade him to put pen to paper.

The agency from which he bought the property is Strutt & Parker International, which also sold Sir Patrick Gillam - Standard Chartered's chairman - his London pied a terre last year.