Sarban is described in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy as "a subtle, literate teller of tales, conscious of the darker and less acceptable implications that underlie much popular literature".
Wall cited the supernatural fiction of Arthur Machen and Walter de la Mare as influences on his work.
He chose a diplomatic career in the Near East because "[James Elroy] Flecker, whose poetry I had loved in my school days, had been in the Levant Consular Service", and owing to "a liking for travel and oriental philology".
Wall continued to work for the Foreign Office, at first in a teaching position in London, 1966–1970, and then at the Government Communications Headquarters, a secret surveillance centre, in Cheltenham.
Sarban's most famous literary work is the alternative-history novel The Sound of His Horn (1952), which presupposes that the Nazis have won the Second World War and built parks where they hunt genetically altered humans for sport.