James Herbert

James Herbert, English author and illustrator (died 2013)

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Born: April 8, 1943
Died: March 20, 2013
Zodiac sign: Aries
Birth year: 1943

About James Herbert

James John Herbert, OBE was an English horror writer. A full-time writer, he also designed his own book covers and publicity. His books have sold 54 million copies worldwide, and have been translated into 34 languages, including Chinese and Russian. With his third novel, the ghost story The Survivor, Herbert used supernatural horror rather than the science fiction horror of his first two books. He attended a Catholic school in Bethnal Green called Our Lady of the Assumption, then at 11 won a scholarship to St Aloysius Grammar School in Highgate. His first two books, The Rats and The Fog, were disaster novels with man-eating giant black rats in the first and an accidentally released chemical weapon in the second.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when James Herbert was born

James Herbert was born in 1943. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1943

#1 song"As Time Goes By" – Dooley Wilson
Top movieFor Whom the Bell Tolls
Best-selling bookThe Robe – Lloyd C. Douglas

Headlines and milestones

Major sports momentAll-American Girls Professional Baseball League founded
Top headlineAllies invade Italy
Technology milestoneLSD accidentally discovered by Albert Hofmann
Defining fadZoot suits
Notable inventionSlinky
World population2.38 billion

United States snapshot

U.S. leaderFranklin D. Roosevelt
Sports championNew York Yankees (World Series)
U.S. population136.7M

1943 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in James Herbert's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure	1943	2026
Gas	$0.21	$3.45/gal
Average home	$5,700	$435,000
Average income	$4,100	$67,500
Minimum wage	$0.30	$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket	$0.27	$11.95
Postage stamp	$0.03	$0.73
Population	136.7M	341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.