Clive Barker was born in Liverpool, England, in October 1952. Born into a port, with a sea-captain for a godfather and a ship’s cook for a grandfather, he was always being told stories of far away places. And from a very early age it was America that caught his imagination. America was the place of origin of so many things he loved: comic books, musicals, movies. Sitting in the alley-way behind his house near Penny Lane, he would watch for hours the silver darts of jets passing across the sky. In his imagination they were always going to America.

In his early thirties, he became a successful writer of short-stories and later of novels. He directed a horror movie called Hellraiser, which brought him a whole legion of friends and fans in America. He kept writing through his thirties, crossing over the Atlantic countless times to do book tours and to work on movies. Finally, as he approached forty, he took the plunge. He bought a house reportedly built by another English man, the dashing matinee idol Ronald Colman, and moved his whole life to California.

He has never regretted it. “Though in some deep part of my soul,” he says, “I will always be an Englishman, I am as entranced by America, which had opened its arms to me so lovingly, as I was all those years ago, watching the jets cross the sky, and knowing – I think – that one day I would book passage to carry me to America for a lifetime.”

Additional Resources: www.clivebarker.com