“I’m a gay man who made creations of which my family did not approve,” he says. But also at his commercial peak and the 1995 novel Sacrament. This happened early on, with his 1984 short story In the Hills the Cities, about a gay couple from England who stumble upon ancient horrors in Yugoslavia. Nonetheless, he has encountered prejudice in his career. He recalls editors asking him to turn queer characters straight. Nobody else does it quite like him.īarker has been comfortably out since his late teens. “His face was stripped of skin and the three deeply embedded hooks in his chest and stomach pulled out heart, lungs and entrails all at once,” goes one passage. Barker at full gory gush is like Maradona bearing down on goal. The Scarlet Gospels, his bestseller from 2015, opens with his famous “Pinhead” villain disembowelling, at great length, a gathering of sorcerers. In the movie Candyman, which began as Barker’s short story The Forbidden, for instance, an urban legend with a hook hand disembowels his victims while breathing sweet nothings in their ears. Still, it’s the bloody stuff that turns people on. Indeed, it is possible to be a fan of Barker and completely skip the gruesome bits. That isn’t all he is about, to be sure. Barker has penned magical children’s books (The Thief of Always, The Books of Abarat) and urban fantasy (Weaveworld). In the Eighties his work was categorised as its own genre of “Splatterpunk” – defined as “hyper-intensive horror with no limits”. Then and now a transgressive electricity runs through his writing. He wants to make you sit bolt upright and, occasionally, cause your stomach to clench. His goal is not to gently unsettle or bring on cosy, pre-bedtime chills. He is punk to his core and greatest hits such as the Hellbound Heart (adapted into Hellraiser) and the Books of Blood ripple with taboo imagery. They are, in their own ways, asking us to gather around the campfire, where ghost stories will be shared.īarker isn’t interested in spooky tales. Many horror writers, even doyens such as Stephen King, have a weakness for the schlocky and the quaint. And writing like crazy.īefore his accident Barker, 68, was horror’s ultimate bad boy.

“It feels as though after illness and silence I’m finally back… back where I was,” he says, his accent hovering somewhere between Beverly Hills and his hometown of Liverpool. And yet, if understandably cautious about his health, he is upbeat too.

He’s still recovering from the toxic shock that sent him into a coma in 2012, which is why he and his husband, Roman, must take every precaution. We’re both nervous and anxious.”īarker, the wild child of Eighties British horror, is seeing out the coronavirus in his mansion high in the Hollywood hills.

“My husband and I don’t embrace now,” says Clive Barker.

It’s close to midnight and the voice down the phone line from Los Angeles is hoarse and faint but full of warmth.

Clive barker's the forbidden