A thousand years of storm wear wipes the faces from the stone heads decorating Gormenghast stormenghast, eyes and features flattened by a million streams of rain.

‘Storm-nibbled heads, their shallow faces straited with bad green and draped with creepers.’

Source: Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan, introduction by Anthony Burgess (London: Vintage Books, 1998), p. 469