[citation needed] He left the agency to join Charles Barker Advertising where he worked as art director and then group head.

[2] Later in the same year, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2010 Birthday Honours, presented by Prince Charles.

[14] Others of Herbert's books, such as Moon, Sepulchre and Portent, are structured as thrillers and include espionage and detective story elements along with the supernatural.

The Jonah is in large part the story of a police investigation, albeit by a policeman whose life is overshadowed by a supernatural presence.

The Spear deals with a neo-Nazi cult[13] in Britain and an international conspiracy which includes a right-wing US general and an arms dealer.

'48 is an alternative history novel set in 1948 in which the Second World War ended with the release of a devastating plague by the defeated Hitler and, like The Spear, features British characters who sympathise with the Nazis.

Once... includes another reference to the character of Rumbo (along with an in-joke of elven folk having names of reversed titles of Herbert's previous novels; 'Hanoj', 'Niamod', 'Noom', etc.).

One of the characters in this novel is named after a real person, who won the honour by having the winning bid in the 2004 BBC Radio 2 Children in Need Auction.

Ash imagines Princess Diana and her secret son as well as Lord Lucan, Colonel Gaddafi and Robert Maxwell living together in a Scottish castle.

"[16] "There are few things I would like to do less than lie under a cloudy night sky while someone read aloud the more vivid passages of Moon," Andrew Postman wrote in The New York Times Book Review.