James Herbert took the horror novel out of gothic castles and placed it in the scariest of modern urban and rural settings. He had a formidable intellect, and was huge fun to be around. Jim stuck with me through some of the most troubled times in my life. When I became deeply despondent about my writing career, and was on the verge of chucking it in, he was the one person who truly believed in me. But boy, did you never want to be on the wrong side of him. Part of the drive that made him so successful was his absolute belief in himself – not only did he design his own book jackets and select the print fonts but he also insisted on choosing the paper on which his books were printed.
Jim quit his lucrative advertising career (he and Salman Rushdie once worked together at the same agency) to try to make it as a writer. His first ever review was a withering one, in the Observer, written by one Henry Tilney – the pseudonym of Martin Amis at that time. It was so bad that Jim was in tears, telling his wife, Eileen, that he had made a terrible mistake and should never have quit his job. The massive sales of The Rats and his subsequent novels, and the adulation of his fans, soon made that gloom history.