The biography, the real meat of
Lest You Should Suffer Nightmares, accounts for 36 of the 90 pages, the rest devoted to a selection of Van Thal's correspondence, a bibliography, interviews with PBOH contributors Alex Hamilton, David A. Riley, Conrad Hill, David Case, Francis King, Gee Wiiliams and James Jauncey, and a reprint of the author's article on the series for
SFX magazine in Feb. 2010, Van Thal would appear to have been a hard man to know - of the interviewees, few actually met him though David Case, who speaks very fondly of the great man, clearly got along with him famously - so Mr. Mains had his work cut out. He's unearthed several fascinating snippets - the John Reginald Christie connection, the (failed) 1954 prosecution for obscenity of Hugh MacGraw's
The Man In Control and its tragic consequences, and, via Hugh Lamb, the original sources for the filched introductions to the Seabury Quinn and E. F. Benson stories in Vol. 5 - but van Thal remains an enigma. Those interviewed tend to agree that he was a parsimonious sod, that he and Clarence Paget were embroiled in some kind of ego-driven power struggle, that he both encouraged and exploited young authors in equal measure, that his enthusiasm for the
Pan Book Of Horror Stories waned somewhere around number 16, and, if the late John Burke is to believed, so "terrifyingly, downright" ugly of face that the jarring inclusion of Sir Frederick Treves
The Elephant Man in Vol 4 may have been reasons other than merely meeting the page count. Tellingly perhaps, only a woman, Dulce Gray chooses to remember Herbert as "one of the most generous, warm-hearted men I have ever met.", though it's also fair to say that those authors he shafted don't appear to have borne him any lasting ill-will.
Interspersed with the essay - and, for this reader, where the real fun begins - Mr. Mains' running commentary on the merits or otherwise of individual volumes and stories. For such an avowed fan of the series, he's not slow to slaughter virtually everything post-
15th Pan Book Of Horror Stories and much before. Alan Temperley's
Kowlongo Plaything and
Love On The Farm are, apparently, "turgid, overly nasty stories", while his
The Boy With The Golden Eyes, surely one of Vol. 18's very few saving graces, is entirely overlooked. Of
The Third Pan Book Of Horror Stories - essentially a wholesale plundering of Charles Birkin's
Horrors with added
The Execution Of Damiens,
A Rose For Emily - he writes "This volume was in danger of turning the series into one that only contained generic, middle of the road horror." "The 11th Pan Book Of Horror Stories was a rather limp affair with only several stories, including the aforementioned David A. Riley piece, receiving any positive credit." 18 is a "very bland, boring volume", 22-24 contain "very little to write home about." Only numbers one, two, seven, eight and fourteen meet with anything like unadulterated approval. The which-version-of-'Alex White'-was-responsible-for-
The Clinic guessing game continues. This time out Mr. Mains puts Conrad Hill in the frame, which, for all I know, may be correct, but .... Later in the book, Hill, flatly denies ever having written for the series under any other than his own name.
The rest of
Lest You Should Suffer Nightmares has a likeable
The Herbert Van That Scrapbook feel. The acceptance letters - to Myc Harrison, Conrad Hill ("Please write me some more really filthy stories ..."), Roger Clarke, Catherine Gleason and her doppelgänger 'Roger Malisson' - are invariably good humoured affairs, and i like that the interviews remain proud to have contributed to the series. Poor Clarence Paget comes in for stick from just about everyone!
Thanks to Johnny Mains - apologies for making you wait so long for so little - and to
David A. Green of
Petersfield Indexing, whose recent, very helpful Index to the book reminded me it was still on the to-be-appallingly-reviewed pile (i first read it last Christmas!). Will add David's homepage on
Vault Members Sites, boards, blogs etc. the as I believe his services could prove useful to some of our authors!