Herbert's Rats trilogy was based in part on his own experiences in growing up among the Blitz-damaged areas of Whitechapel and Bethnal Green, east London, which were a haven for rats, and as a young adult he saw Todd Browning's 1931 Dracula, where the rat-infestation scene made a great impact on him;[1][note 1] he was later to claim that he conceived the idea after watching it.

[4] A prologue describes rats living underground, listening to the nuclear attack—thought to have been a culmination of Middle Eastern geopolitical tensions—that devastates London.

The book's protagonist, ex-pilot Mike Culver, attempts to escape with other people, but encounters Alex Dealey, a civil servant who has been temporarily blinded by the blasts.

They discover that it was China that launched the attack and was subsequently flattened; more people escaped London that was expected and while martial law now reigned a coalition government was about to be formed and society rebuilt.

[16][note 3] Stylistically, the literary critic Ramsey Campbell has suggested that Domain is exemplar of Herbert's ability to write intimate scenes which are as horrific as some of the broader set pieces.

For example, he compares the mass destruction in the opening scenes of The Fog to Domains "drowning man dragged back from the relief of death to the devastated world".

[18][note 4] These vignettes—sometimes almost short stories in themselves—highlight the hopelessness of the individual's situation:[20] a greedy garage owner who delays finding shelter in order to collect his takings; a prostitute in the Park Lane Hilton who gets fused to a windowpane; a woman who fights off a rapist in the Royal Festival Hall; a deranged woman who props her decaying family up at the breakfast table and puts mouldy cornflakes before them; the insurance agent who suffocates in his shelter.

[20][note 5] This, argues Michael A. Morrison, demonstrates Domain's "conservative, essentially Christian theology, based on original sin and universal guilt".

[14] Morrison suggests that while its two rat-revelling predecessors were effectively pulp fiction, the final work possessed more nuanced social criticism.

[26] This maturity is also reflected, Cole suggests, in the depiction of Culver and Kate's burgeoning relationship; while his earlier attempts at writing such narratives were often "idealised ... or chauvinist", in Domain it "forms a solid backbone" for the action, without becoming self-indulgent.

[6] The MOD nuclear shelters in the London Underground network were based on an existing construction around the tunnels between High Holborn and Chancery Lane, with an entrance on Furnival Street.

The journalist Maev Kennedy, writing in The Guardian, reported that "In the 1980s the novelist James Herbert pleaded to be allowed in but was turned down flat".

[29] Herbert said he had written to the then-owners, British Telecom, and asked them "I knew where it was, behind a brick wall with barbed wire on the top with observation cameras.

[35] One—the deranged woman serving breakfast—was published in Graham Masterton's Scare Care in 1989, with proceeds going to charities dealing with child abuse.