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Ramsey Campbell was born in Liverpool in 1946 and now lives in Wallasey. He has received the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association, the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University for outstanding services to literature. His first book was published by the legendary Arkham House when he was eighteen years old. His later work draws on the British and American traditions of horror fiction. It ranges from the psychological to the ghostly, the subtly uncanny to the cosmic, the quietly disquieting to the terrifying, the poignant to the darkly comic. His Flame Tree books include Thirteen Days by Sunset Beach, in which a family on holiday encounters an ancient horror on a Greek island, and Think Yourself Lucky, where the internet lets loose the monsters lurking within people just like us. In Somebody's Voice a writer finds his memory and personality threatened by trying to write the memoir of a victim of abuse. The Three Births of Daoloth trilogy - The Searching Dead, Born to the Dark and The Way of the Worm - pits three childhood friends against a terror as vast as time and space. Three of Campbell's novels have been filmed - The Influence (available from FLAME TREE PRESS), Pact of the Fathers and The Nameless (in development as a Netflix series). He reviewed films for the local BBC for nearly forty years, and is presently working on an appreciation of the Three Stooges, Six Stooges and Counting. A new supernatural novel, Fellstones, is in progress too.
Praise for Ramsey Campbell: An absolute master of modern horror. And a damn fine writer at that (Guillermo del Toro) He is unsurpassed in the subtle manipulation of mood... You forget you're just reading a story (Publishers Weekly) He writes of our deepest fears in a precise, clear prose that somehow manages to be beautiful and terrifying at the same time. He is a powerful, original writer, and you owe it to yourself to make his acquaintance (Washington Post) Britain's most respected living horror writer (Oxford Companion to English Literature) Easily the best horror writer working in Britain today (Time Out) Britain's leading horror writer... His novels have been getting better and better (City Limits) One of Britain's most accomplished horror writers (Oxford Star) The John Le Carre of horror fiction (Bookshelf, Radio 4) One of the best real horror writers at work today (Interzone) The greatest living exponent of the British weird fiction tradition (The Penguin Encyclopaedia of Horror and the Supernatural) Ramsey Campbell has succeeded more brilliantly than any other writer in bringing the supernatural tale up to date without sacrificing the literary standards that early masters made an indelible part of the tradition (Jack Sullivan, editor of the Penguin encyclopaedia) England's contemporary king of the horror genre (Atlanta Constitution) One of the few real writers in our field... In some ways Ramsey Campbell is the best of us all (Peter Straub) Ramsey Campbell has a talent for terror - he knows how to give you nightmares while you're still awake... Only a few writers can lay claim to such a level of consummate craftsmanship (Robert Bloch) Campbell writes the most terrifying horror tales of anyone now alive (Twilight Zone Magazine) One of the world's finest exponents of the classic British ghost story (Sounds) Britain's greatest living horror writer (Alan Moore) For sheer ability to compose disturbing, evocative prose, he is unmatched in the horror/fantasy field... He turns the traditional horror novel inside out, and makes it work brilliantly (Fangoria) Campbell has solidly established himself to be the best writer working in this field today (Karl Edward Wagner, The Year's Best Horror Stories) When Mr Campbell pits his fallible, most human characters against enormous forces bent on incomprehensible errands the results are, as you might expect, often frightening, and, as you might not expect, often touching; even heartwarming (Gahan Wilson in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction) Britain's leading horror novelist (New Statesman) Ramsey Campbell is Britain's finest living writer of horror stories: considerable praise for a man whose country boasts the talents of Clive Barker and Roald Dahl, M. John Harrison and Nigel Kneale (Douglas Winter, editor of Prime Evil) Campbell writes the most disturbing horror fiction around (Today) Ramsey Campbell is better than all the rest of us put together (Dennis Etchison) Ramsey Campbell is the best horror writer alive, period (Thomas Tessier) A horror writer in the classic mould... Britain's premier contemporary exponent of the art of scaring you out of your skin (Q Magazine) The undisputed master of the psychological horror novel (Robert Holdstock) Perhaps the most important living writer in the horror fiction field (David Hartwell) Ramsey Campbell's work is tremendous (Jonathan Ross) Campbell is a rightful tenant of M. R. James country, the genuine badlands of the human psyche (Norman Shrapnel in the Guardian) One of the world's finest exponents of the classic British ghost story... His writing explores the potential for fear in the mundane, the barely heard footsteps, the shadow flitting past at the edge of one's sight (Daily Telegraph) The Grand Master of British horror... the greatest living writer of horror fiction (Vector) Britain's greatest horror writer... Realistic, subtle and arcane (Waterstone's Guide to Books) In Campbell's hands words take on a life of their own, creating images that stay with you, feelings that prey on you, and people you hope never ever to meet (Starburst) The finest writer now working in the horror field (Interzone) Ramsey Campbell is the nearest thing we have to an heir to M. R. James (Times) Campbell is literate in a field which has attracted too many comic-book intellects, cool in a field where too many writers - myself included - tend toward panting melodrama... Good horror writers are quite rare, and Campbell is better than just good (Stephen King) Easily the finest practising British horror novelist and the one whose work can most wholeheartedly be recommended to those who dislike the genre... His misclassification as a genre writer obscures his status as the finest magic realist Britain possesses this side of J. G. Ballard (Daily Telegraph) Good stuff. But strange; so uniquely Campbell that it might as well be trademarked (Stephen King) One of the few who can scare and disturb as well as make me laugh out loud. His humour is very black but very funny, and that's a rare gift to have (Mark Morris in the Observer) The most sophisticated and highly regarded of British horror writers (Financial Times) I would say that only five writers have written serious novels which incorporate themes of fantasy or the inexplicable and still qualify as literature: T. E. D. Klein, Peter Straub, Richard Adams, Jonathan Carroll and Ramsey Campbell (Stephen King) Ramsey Campbell is the best of us all (Poppy Z. Brite) The foremost stylist and innovator in British horror fiction (The Scream Factory) One of the century's great literary exponents of the gothic and horrific (Guardian) Ramsey Campbell is one of the modern masters of horror... He has a genius for infusing horror into the everyday, piling up small moments of dread and confusion and fear until they become insurmountable. (Tim Pratt in Locus) One of the all-time greats of British horror fiction (Damien Walter in the Guardian) There are a few writers who are special. They make the world in their books; or rather, they open a window or a door or a magic casement, and they show you the world in which they live. Ramsey Campbell, for example, writes stories that, read in quantity, will re-form your world into a grey and ominous place in which strange shapes flicker at the corner of your eyes, and a patch of smoke or a blown plastic shopping bag takes on some kind of ghastly significance. (Neil Gaiman)
