He brought to these his immense knowledge of the occult, psychological insights and a richness of background and characterisation which rank his stories with those of M. R. James and Walter de la Mare.

"[1] This situation has since been remedied by an extensive programme of reprints of Aickman's work by Tartarus Press, Faber, and New York Review Books Classics.

[3] Mike Ashley reported that at the time he compiled his Who's Who in Horror and Fantasy Fiction, Aickman objected to the inclusion of his date of birth.

"[1] On his mother's side, Aickman was the grandson of the prolific Victorian novelist Richard Marsh (1857–1915), known for his occult thriller The Beetle (1897), a book as popular in its time as Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Unfortunately that talk never took place, but Ashley points out that Aickman's early life, including some supernatural episodes, will be found detailed in his autobiography, The Attempted Rescue (Gollancz, 1966).

She authored Lemuel (illustrated by Peter Scott, husband of Elizabeth Jane Howard, with whom Aickman had an affair) and Timothy Tramcar.

[1] With a keen interest in the theatre, ballet, and music, Aickman also served as a chairman of the London Opera Society (1954–69) and was active in the London Opera Club, the Ballet Minerva, and the Mikron Theatre Company (a company which performs via touring the canal waterways of Britain).

Later, there was a memorial concert at the Royal Society of Arts, at which various well-known people, including the naturalist Sir Peter Scott, paid tribute to him.

[8] In 2015 R. B. Russell and Rosalie Parker of Tartarus Press released a feature-length documentary on the life and work of Robert Aickman, which was premiered at the World Fantasy Convention.

The IWA organised successful campaigns and attracted notable supporters, including as president the writer and parliamentarian Sir A. P. Herbert and as vice-president the naturalist Peter Scott.

Aickman engineered a change to the rules to require all members to conform to agreed IWA principles, and in early 1951 Rolt and others were excluded from membership.

Nevertheless, the IWA has been one of the most successful conservation organisations in British history, succeeding in restoring and reopening much of the original canal network.

Opening as a comedy of manners, its playful seriousness slowly fades into an elegiac variation on the great Greek myth of thwarted love.

His own subsequent collections were Powers of Darkness (1966), Sub Rosa (1968), Cold Hand in Mine (1976), Tales of Love and Death (1977) and Intrusions (1980).

...I believe in life after death, and I decline to particularize upon the meaning of the words, because of all futile and reductionist attempts at definition, this is the most idle.

[12]Cold Hand in Mine and Painted Devils featured dust jacket drawings by acclaimed gothic illustrator Edward Gorey.

In 1975, Aickman received the World Fantasy Award for short fiction for his story "Pages from a Young Girl's Journal".

This story had originally appeared in February 1973 in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction; it was reprinted in Cold Hand in Mine.

In 1968, a television adaptation of "Ringing the Changes", retitled "The Bells of Hell", appeared on the BBC 2 programme Late Night Horror.

In 1987, HTV West produced a six-episode anthology series for television called Night Voices, of which four were based upon stories by Aickman: "The Hospice", "The Inner Room", "Hand In Glove" and "The Trains".

A musical staging of his short story "The Same Dog", for which Dyson co-wrote the libretto with Joby Talbot, premiered in 2000 at the Barbican Concert Hall.

"Just a Song at Twilight", "Le Miroir", "Raising the Wind", "The Coffin House" and "The Fully-Conducted Tour" were read by Tim McInnerny.

Aickman's autobiographical writing consists of the two memoirs The Attempted Rescue (London: Victor Gollancz, 1966) and The River Runs Uphill: A Story of Success and Failure (Burton-on-Trent: Pearson, 1986).