14 Facts About James Herbert

James Herbert's books have sold 54 million copies worldwide, and have been translated into 34 languages, including Chinese and Russian.

James Herbert left school at 15 and studied at Hornsey College of Art, joining the art department of John Collings, a small advertising agency.

James Herbert left the agency to join Charles Barker Advertising where he worked as art director and then group head.

James Herbert had two brothers: Peter, a retired market trader and John, an insurance broker.

James Herbert would write his drafts in longhand on "jumbo pads".

In 1979 James Herbert had to pay damages when it was ruled that he had based part of his novel The Spear on the work of another writer, The Spear of Destiny by Trevor Ravenscroft.

In 2010 James Herbert was honoured with the World Horror Convention Grand Master Award, presented to him by Stephen King.

On 20 March 2013, James Herbert died suddenly at his home in Sussex at the age of 69.

James Herbert is survived by his wife, Eileen, and three daughters.

James Herbert wrote three sequels to The Rats: Lair, which deals with a second outbreak of the mutant black rats, this time in the countryside around Epping Forest rather than in the first book's London slums; in Domain, a nuclear war results in rats having become the dominant species in a devastated city; the third sequel, the graphic novel The City, is an adventure set in the post-nuclear future.

James Herbert had previously tackled the theme of reincarnation in his fourth novel, Fluke, the fantasy story of a dog who somehow remembers his previous life as a human being.

James Herbert described Creed as his Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

James Herbert released a new novel virtually every year from 1974 to 1988, wrote six novels during the 1990s and released three new works in the 2000s.

James Herbert was the subject of a This is Your Life programme in 1995, when he was surprised by Michael Aspel at the London Dungeon.