Clive Barker was born in Liverpool in 1952. He is the author of The Books of Blood (in six volumes), The Damnation Game, Weaveworld, Cabal, The Great and Secret Show, Imajica, Everville and Sacrament as well as writing, directing and producing for the screen - his films include Hellraiser and Nightbreed. He presently lives in Los Angeles.

Clive Barker is an important, exciting and enormously talented writer. .. I literally could not read him alone. His stories are compulsively readable and original. He is an important, exciting and enormously talented writer ... What Barker does makes the rest of us look like we've been asleep for the last ten years