Peter Greave

Peter Greave (29 October 1910 – 1 November 1977) was an English writer.

Personal life Peter Greave was born Gerald Peter Wilkinson on 29 October 1910 in Calcutta. His father, Herbert Reginald Wilkinson, was a former British Army soldier working for Doyle & Company and his mother the daughter of a former Assistant Police Commissioner of Bombay.

Gerald Wilkinson's childhood was marked by a series of crises created by his father Herbert, who was both a swindler and a compulsive exhibitionist. His mother died of cancer in 1927 and Gerald, his brother Michael, and his sister Mary were sent to separate orphanages. The book was also published by Henry Holt and Company in the United States.

He then followed with two novels loosely based on his experiences in India prior to the onset of his leprosy: Young Man in the Sun in 1958 and The Painted Leopard in 1960. The Times of India's reviewer wrote of the first book, "This is a rare novel: one in which humor is distilled to the last bitter drop.... Whatever he may or may not have learnt about commerce and love, Peter Greave certainly learnt a lot about life and he depicts the part of his education with a brilliance that makes one long for more from his pen".

By the early 1960s, his eyesight had begun to fail. Despite a series of operations, he lost his sight completely in early 1968 and had to write by dictating to one of the secretaries of St Giles. In 1967, he received a £600 bursary from Arts Council England, which he used in part to purchase a tape recorder for his dictations.

In 1976, Maurice Temple Smith published The Seventh Gate, a memoir of his life up to his final departure from India. Reviewing the book for The Times, Jeremy Lewis called it "one of the most vivid, humorous and movingly entertaining autobiographies I have read in years". In New Society, Tony Gould wrote that "The Seventh Gate is a marvellous book — joyous and enchanting. It is a celebration of life such as perhaps only someone who had been deprived of all that makes it worthwhile could compose".

He died at St Giles on 1 November 1977.

Works Memoirs The Second Miracle (1955) The Seventh Gate (1976)

Novels Young Man in the Sun (1958) The Painted Leopard (1960)