Best-selling author James Herbert, who wrote the horror classic The Rats, has died aged 69, according to BBC News.
Herbert's publisher, Pan Macmillan, confirmed that he died at his home in Sussex on March 20 morning. No cause of death was given.
Jeremy Trevathan, his editor for 10 years, described him as "one of the keystone authors in a genre that had its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s".
He is survived by his wife, Eileen, whom he married in 1967, and their three daughters Kerry, Emma and Casey.
Herbert's first novel, The Rats, depicted London overrun by mutant flesh-eating rodents and sold 100,000 copies within two weeks of being published in 1974. Since then, he has published 23 novels in more than 30 languages, selling 54 million copies worldwide. His latest book, Ash, was published last week.
Herbert was appointed an OBE by the Queen in 2010 – the same year he was made Grand Master of Horror by the World of Horror Convention.
Born in London's East End on 8 April 1943, Herbert won a scholarship to St Aloysius Grammar School in Highgate at the age of 10. After a college course in graphic design, he went on to work at an advertising agency. He started his first novel, The Rats, at the age of 28 and completed it within 10 months. He submitted the manuscript to six publishers, three of whom replied. Of those, two rejected the novel and one accepted it.
The Rats was one of four Herbert novels made into films, along with The Survivor, Fluke and Haunted.
