Clive Barker
The most original British horror voice of his generation: Barker rewired the genre's relationship with the body and desire, founded the dark-fantasy register a generation now writes in, and gave horror cinema one of its…
Body Horror & Splatterpunk
Horror of the flesh transformed, transgressed and taken apart, given literary swagger in the 1980s.
The authors (2)
James Herbert
The man who built the British mass market for horror: Herbert's paperbacks made the genre a working-class national pastime in the 1970s, and the visceral, urban, set-piece-driven school he founded runs through British horror…
Essential books, oldest first (6)
The Island of Doctor Moreau
A founding text of biological SF and uplift fiction, echoing through Cordwainer Smith, David Brin and modern bio-horror.
Hell House
The dark twin of Hill House and the template for the 'team investigates bad place' structure that powers half of modern horror cinema; filmed in 1973 as The Legend of Hell House from Matheson's…
The Rats
The book that founded modern British mass-market horror — the 'nasty' done with real craft and class fury — launching Herbert's career, two sequels and the template for every revolt-of-nature…
The Fog
The book that confirmed The Rats was no fluke and fixed Herbert's signature — civic catastrophe as a sequence of unforgettable atrocities — influencing the entire British disaster-horror line…
The Books of Blood
World and British Fantasy Award-winning collections that announced horror's most original new voice since King — who said so, in the most famous blurb the genre owns — and founded modern body…
The Hellbound Heart
Source of Hellraiser (1987), directed by Barker himself, and of Pinhead's permanent place in horror iconography; the most influential treatment of the 'be careful what you summon by wanting' theme…