James Herbert

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 1986

⏱️ 34 minutes

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Summary

James Herbert has now sold more than 16 million copies of his novels. In conversation with Michael Parkinson, he recalls his childhood in the East End of London where his parents were street traders, his training at art college which led to a career in advertising, and The Rats, his first and successful attempt at writing when he was 28.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Morning (from Peer Gynt Suite No 1) by Edvard Grieg Book: Anthology including The History of Mr Polly by H G Wells Luxury: Grand piano

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 1986, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson. I cast to wait today is in the top 10 of best-selling British writers and indisputably the number one writer of horror fiction.
0:36.0	His first novel, The Rats, was described by one reviewer as rubbish.
0:40.0	It went on to become a huge bestseller, was reprinted 21 times, which is why the reviewer is not our desert hour and guest today, but the author is.
0:49.0	He is James Herbert.
0:50.0	Jim, how daunting is it a review like that? I mean there you were, the very first book you've ever written,
0:55.0	he got a review in which the critic suggested it was thrown into the garbage can, I think.
1:00.0	Yeah, I mean it was so traumatic, I remember that very Sunday morning because it was a critic on the observer.
1:07.0	And I'd collected all the Sunday papers and I went through them with my wife and found no reviews at all except this one that said
1:15.6	the rats is rubbish.
1:18.1	And I said, well that's it, I'm no good as a writer and I'll stick to advertising, which
1:22.4	was the job I was doing at that time and I
1:25.5	really thought I was finished before I'd even started and yet the following week the
1:29.7	Sunday Times said the book was brilliant so I kind of leaned towards a so many times.
1:34.0	Let's have a first choice of record.
1:37.0	My first choice is Blueberry Hill, a thatched domino, and I had this one years ago. It came out in 1956. I've still got it
1:46.4	on an old 78 and the reason I love this record is because I lived in a street that was very narrow and there were
1:54.4	cobblestones gas lighting it wasn't that many years ago but it was one of the
1:58.8	oldest streets in London it was so narrow it was like a funnel and it went up to all gates and I my house is at the bottom of this street and I used to blare out this record and people used to come from the I was to see what the sound was.
2:14.0	And that the first record was Blueberry Hill that I played in the Michigan.
2:18.0	I found my three on Blueberry Hill.
	...

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