S wan Point Cemetery in Providence, Rhode Island, is the most appropriate location in the world at which to suffer an onslaught of existential horror. Not that this was any comfort as I arrived there one summer, my more-than-slightly unenthusiastic girlfriend in tow, only to be confronted by rows of headstones bristling into the horizon. We had come for one grave in particular. But how to find it amid this riot of marble and faded lettering?

Our dreaded sunny day at the cemetery gates had already involved a winding drive from central Providence past the Rhode Island School of Design, where the future members of Talking Heads had met in the mid-Seventies (and where Seth MacFarlane created Family Guy).

Now came the true challenge. Swan Point is the final resting place of HP Lovecraft, father of modern horror and among the greatest pulp authors of all time (and also a racist of considerable derangement). The world is about to receive another reminder of his gibbering genius with a Nicolas Cage-starring adaptation of cosmic fright-fest Colour Out of Space, premiering at the London Film Festival on Monday.

As a fan of Lovecraft’s writing (his racism was not yet on my radar), I’d begged that we go out of our way on our holiday to visit Providence. This was our second attempt at honouring Howard Phillips. The first had come unstuck several days previously when we missed our Greyhound stop in the city centre and ended up at staring at the Cyclopean battlements of the Foxwood Casino in Connecticut (cue bonus cosmic terror). But now, finally, we’d made it.

The only problem – and this hadn’t detained us earlier because we were young and flying by our pants – was that Swan Point is vast: more than 200 acres and with some 40,000 individual plots. In America, even the baroque New England graveyards are supersized. Just then a chap wearing a uniform and driving a miniaturised tractor trundled up. He was a dead ringer for Richard Farnsworth in David Lynch’s The Straight Story. I explained that we had come with a particular purpose in mind.

40 books to read while self-isolating Show all 40 1 /40 40 books to read while self-isolating 40 books to read while self-isolating Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen It is a fact universally acknowledged that every list of great books must include Pride and Prejudice. Don’t be fooled by the bonnets and balls: beneath the sugary surface is a tart exposé of the marriage market in Georgian England. For every lucky Elizabeth, who tames the haughty, handsome Mr. Darcy and learns to know herself in the process, there’s a Charlotte, resigned to life with a driveling buffoon for want of a pretty face. 40 books to read while self-isolating The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾, Sue Townsend Read this one when you’re decrepit enough, and chances are you’ll die laughing. No-one has lampooned the self-absorption, delusions of grandeur and sexual frustration of adolescence as brilliantly as Susan Townsend, and no one ever will. Beyond the majestically majestic poetry and the pimples, there’s also a sharp satire of Thatcherist Britain. 40 books to read while self-isolating Catch 22, Joseph Heller It’s not often an idiom coined in a novel becomes a catch-phrase, but Joseph Heller managed it with his madcap, savage and hilarious tour de force. War is the ultimate dead-end for logic, and this novel explores all its absurdities as we follow US bombardier pilot Captain John Yossarian. While Heller drew on his own experience as a WWII pilot, it was the McCarthyism of the fifties that fueled the book’s glorious rage. 40 books to read while self-isolating Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy A good 125 years before #metoo, Thomas Hardy skewered the sexual hypocrisy of the Victorian age in this melodramatic but immensely moving novel. Tess is a naïve girl from a poor family who is raped by a wealthy land-owner. After the death of her baby, she tries to build a new life, but the “shame” of her past casts a long shadow. Read this if you want to understand the rotten culture at the root of victim-blaming. 40 books to read while self-isolating Things fall apart, Chinua Achebe A classic exposé of colonialism, Achebe’s novel explores what happens to a Nigerian village when European missionaries arrive. The main character, warrior-like Okonkwo, embodies the traditional values that are ultimately doomed. By the time Achebe was born in 1930, missionaries had been settled in his village for decades. He wrote in English and took the title of his novel from a Yeats poem, but wove Igbo proverbs throughout this lyrical work. 40 books to read while self-isolating 1984, George Orwell The ultimate piece of dystopian fiction, 1984 was so prescient that it’s become a cliché. But forget TV’s Big Brother or the trite travesty of Room 101: the original has lost none of its furious force. Orwell was interested in the mechanics of totalitarianism, imagining a society that took the paranoid surveillance of the Soviets to chilling conclusions. Our hero, Winston, tries to resist a grey world where a screen watches your every move, but bravery is ultimately futile when the state worms its way inside your mind. 40 books to read while self-isolating To kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee A timeless plea for justice in the setting of America’s racist South during the depression years, Lee’s novel caused a sensation. Her device was simple but incendiary: look at the world through the eyes of a six-year-old, in this case, Jean Louise Finch, whose father is a lawyer defending a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. Lee hoped for nothing but “a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers”: she won the Pulitzer and a place on the curriculum. 40 books to read while self-isolating Great Expectations, Charles Dickens Dickens was the social conscience of the Victorian age, but don’t let that put you off. Great Expectations is the roiling tale of the orphaned Pip, the lovely Estella, and the thwarted Miss Havisham. First written in serial form, you barely have time to recover from one cliffhanger before the next one beckons, all told in Dickens’ luxuriant, humorous, heartfelt prose. 40 books to read while self-isolating The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy Roy won the 1997 Booker Prize with her debut novel, a powerful intergenerational tale of love that crosses caste lines in southern India, and the appalling consequences for those who break the taboos dictating “who should be loved, and how. And how much”. Sex, death, religion, the ambivalent pull of motherhood: it’s all there in this beautiful and haunting book. 40 books to read while self-isolating Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel In an astonishing act of literary ventriloquism, Mantel inhabits a fictionalised version of Thomas Cromwell, a working-class boy who rose through his own fierce intelligence to be a key player in the treacherous world of Tudor politics. Historical fiction so immersive you can smell the fear and ambition. 40 books to read while self-isolating The Code of the Woosters, PG Wodehouse If you haven’t read PG Wodehouse in a hot bath with a snifter of whisky and ideally a rubber duck for company, you haven’t lived. Wallow in this sublimely silly tale of the ultimate comic double act: bumbling aristocrat Bertie Wooster and his omniscient butler, Jeeves. A sheer joy to read that also manages to satirise British fascist leader Oswald Mosley as a querulous grump in black shorts. 40 books to read while self-isolating Frankenstein, Mary Shelley Shelley was just 18 when she wrote Frankenstein as part of a challenge with her future husband, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron, to concoct the best horror story. Put down the green face paint: Frankenstein’s monster is a complex creation who yearns for sympathy and companionship. Some 200 years after it was first published, the gothic tale feels more relevant than ever as genetic science pushes the boundaries of what it means to create life. 40 books to read while self-isolating Lord of the Flies, William Golding Anyone who has ever suspected that children are primitive little beasties will nod sagely as they read Golding’s classic. His theory is this: maroon a bunch of schoolboys on an island, and watch how quickly the trappings of decent behaviour fall away. Never has a broken pair of spectacles seemed so sinister, or civilisation so fragile. 40 books to read while self-isolating Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie The protagonist of Rushdie’s most celebrated novel is born at the exact moment India gains independence. He’s also born with superpowers, and he’s not the only one. In an audacious and poetic piece of magical realism, Rushdie tells the story of India’s blood-soaked resurgence via a swathe of children born at midnight with uncanny abilities. 40 books to read while self-isolating Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte You will need a cold, dead heart not to be moved by one of literature’s steeliest heroines. From the institutional cruelty of her boarding school, the “small, plain” Jane Eyre becomes a governess who demands a right to think and feel. Not many love stories take in a mad woman in the attic and a spot of therapeutic disfigurement, but this one somehow carries it off with mythic aplomb 40 books to read while self-isolating Middlemarch, George Eliot This is a richly satisfying slow burn of a novel that follows the lives and loves of the inhabitants of a small town in England through the years 1829–32. The acerbic wit and timeless truth of its observations mark this out as a work of genius; but at the time the author, Mary Anne Evans, had to turn to a male pen name to be taken seriously. 40 books to read while self-isolating Secret History, Donna Tartt Stick another log on the fire and curl up with this dark, peculiar and quite brilliant literary murder tale. A group of classics students become entranced by Greek mythology - and then take it up a level. Remember, kids: never try your own delirious Dionysian ritual at home. 40 books to read while self-isolating Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie A subtle and engrossing look at racial identity, through the story of a charismatic young Nigerian woman who leaves her comfortable Lagos home for a world of struggles in the United States. Capturing both the hard-scrabble life of US immigrants and the brash divisions of a rising Nigeria, Adichie crosses continents with all her usual depth of feeling and lightness of touch. 40 books to read while self-isolating Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons An absolute unadulterated comic joy of a novel. Stella Gibbons neatly pokes fun at sentimental navel-gazing with her zesty heroine Flora, who is more interested in basic hygiene than histrionics. In other words, if you’ve “seen something nasty in the woodshed,” just shut the door. 40 books to read while self-isolating Beloved, Toni Morrison Dedicated to the “Sixty Million and more” Africans and their descendants who died as a result of the slave trade, this is a cultural milestone and a Pulitzer-winning tour de force. Morrison was inspired by the real-life story of an enslaved woman who killed her own daughter rather than see her return to slavery. In her plot, the murdered child returns to haunt a black community, suggesting the inescapable taint of America’s history. 40 books to read while self-isolating Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh Evelyn Waugh bottles the intoxicating vapour of a vanished era in this novel about middle-class Charles Ryder, who meets upper-class Sebastian Flyte at Oxford University in the 1920s. Scrap the wartime prologue, and Charles’s entire relationship with Sebastian’s sister Julia (Dear Evelyn, thank you for your latest manuscript, a few suggested cuts…) and you’re looking at one of the most affecting love affairs in the English language. 40 books to read while self-isolating Dune, Frank Herbert You can almost feel your mouth dry with thirst as you enter the world of Frank Herbert’s Dune and encounter the desert planet of Arrakis, with its giant sandworms and mind-altering spice. It’s the setting for an epic saga of warring feudal houses, but it’s as much eco-parable as thrilling adventure story. Rarely has a fictional world been so completely realised. 40 books to read while self-isolating Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte Will there ever be a novel that burns with more passionate intensity than Wuthering Heights? The forces that bring together its fierce heroine Catherine Earnshaw and cruel hero Heathcliff are violent and untameable, yet rooted in a childhood devotion to one another, when Heathcliff obeyed Cathy’s every command. It’s impossible to imagine this novel ever provoking quiet slumbers; Emily Bronte’s vision of nature blazes with poetry. 40 books to read while self-isolating The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald The savage reviews that greeted F Scott Fitzgerald’s third novel – “no more than a glorified anecdote”; “for the season only” – failed to recognise something truly great; a near-perfect distillation of the hope, ambition, cynicism and desire at the heart of the American Dream. Other novels capture the allure of the invented self, from Stendhal’s The Red and the Black to Thomas Mann’s Confessions of Felix Krull, but Fitzgerald’s enigmatic Jay Gatsby casts a shadow that reaches to Mad Men’s Don Draper and beyond. 40 books to read while self-isolating A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess From the moment we meet Alex and his three droogs in the Korova milkbar, drinking moloko with vellocet or synthemesc and wondering whether to chat up the devotchkas at the counter or tolchock some old veck in an alley, it’s clear that normal novelistic conventions do not apply. Anthony Burgess’s slim volume about a violent near-future where aversion therapy is used on feral youth who speak Nadsat and commit rape and murder, is a dystopian masterpiece. 40 books to read while self-isolating Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov Banned from entering the UK in its year of publication, 1955, Vladimir Nabokov’s astonishingly skilful and enduringly controversial work of fiction introduces us to literary professor and self-confessed hebephile Humbert Humbert, the perhaps unreliable narrator of the novel. He marries widow Charlotte Haze only to get access to her daughter, 12-year-old Dolores, nicknamed Lo by her mother, or as Humbert calls her “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.” Cloaking his abuse in the allusive language of idealised love does not lessen Humbert’s crimes, but allows Nabokov to skewer him where he hides. 40 books to read while self-isolating Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Philip K Dick Here be Roy Baty, Rick Deckard and Rachael Rosen – the novel that inspired Blade Runner is stranger even than the film it became. Back in an age before artificial intelligence could teach itself to play chess in a few hours better than any grandmaster that ever lived, Philip K Dick was using the concept of android life to explore what it meant to be human, and what it is to be left behind on a compromised planet. That he could do it in 250 pages that set the mind spinning and engage the emotions with every page-turn make this a rare science-fiction indeed. 40 books to read while self-isolating Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad Inspired by Conrad’s own experiences of captaining a trading steamer up the Congo River, Heart of Darkness is part adventure, part psychological voyage into the unknown, as the narrator Marlow relays the story of his journey into the jungle to meet the mysterious ivory trader Mr Kurtz. Although debate continues to rage about whether the novel and its attitude to Africa and colonialism is racist, it’s deeply involving and demands to be read. 40 books to read while self-isolating Dracula, Bram Stoker Whatever passed between Irish theatre manager Bram Stoker and the Hungarian traveller and writer Ármin Vámbéry when they met in London and talked of the Carpathian Mountains, it incubated in the Gothic imagination of Stoker into a work that has had an incalculable influence on Western culture. It’s not hard to read the Count as a shadowy sexual figure surprising straitlaced Victorian England in their beds, but in Stoker’s hands he’s also bloody creepy. 40 books to read while self-isolating The Catcher in the Rye, J D Salinger It only takes one sentence, written in the first person, for Salinger’s Holden Caulfield to announce himself in all his teenage nihilism, sneering at you for wanting to know his biographical details “and all that David Copperfield kind of crap”. The Catcher in the Rye is the quintessential novel of the adolescent experience, captured in deathless prose. 40 books to read while self-isolating The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler Dashiel Hammett may have been harder boiled, his plots more intricate but, wow, does Raymond Chandler have style. The push and pull at the start of The Big Sleep between private detective Philip Marlowe, in his powder-blue suit and dark blue shirt, and Miss Carmen Sternwood, with her “little sharp predatory teeth” and lashes that she lowers and raises like a theatre curtain, sets the tone for a story of bad girls and bad men. 40 books to read while self-isolating Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray All the teeming life of 19th century London is here in Thackeray’s masterpiece, right down to the curry houses frequented by Jos Sedley, who has gained a taste for the hot stuff as an officer in the East India Trading Company. But it is Becky Sharp, one of literature’s great characters, who gives this novel its enduring fascination. As a woman on the make, Becky is the perfect blend of wit, cunning and cold-hearted ruthlessness. Try as film and TV might to humanise and make excuses for her, Becky needs victims to thrive! And she’s all the more compelling for that. 40 books to read while self-isolating The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath The only novel written by the poet Sylvia Plath is a semi-autobiographical account of a descent into depression that the book’s narrator Esther Greenwood describes as like being trapped under a bell jar – used to create a vacuum in scientific experiments – struggling to breathe. Almost every word is arresting, and the way that Plath captures the vivid life happening around Esther, news events, magazine parties, accentuates the deadening illness that drives her towards suicidal feelings. Plath herself would commit suicide one month after the novel’s publication in 1963. 40 books to read while self-isolating Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl Harry Potter may be more popular, but Willy Wonka is altogether weirder. From the overwhelming poverty experienced by Charlie Bucket and his family, to the spoilt, greedy, brattish children who join Charlie on his trip to Willy Wonka’s phantasmagorical sweet factory there is nothing artificially sweetened in Roald Dahl’s startling work of fantasy. 40 books to read while self-isolating Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy Andrew Davies’s recent TV adaptation of War and Peace reminded those of us who can’t quite face returning to the novel’s monstrous demands just how brilliantly Tolstoy delineates affairs of the heart, even if the war passages will always be a struggle. In Anna Karenina – enormous, too! –the great Russian novelist captures the erotic charge between the married Anna and the bachelor Vronsky, then drags his heroine through society’s scorn as their affair takes shape, without ever suggesting we move from her side. 40 books to read while self-isolating Dangerous Liaisons, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos The most deliciously wicked experience in literature, this epistolary novel introduces us to the Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont, who play cruel games of sexual conquest on their unwitting victims. The Marquise’s justification for her behaviour – “I, who was born to revenge my sex and master yours” – will strike a chord in the #metoo era, but emotions, even love, intrude, to the point where Laclos’s amorality becomes untenable. Sexy but very, very bad. 40 books to read while self-isolating 100 Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez The energy and enchantment of Garcia Marquez’s story of seven generations of the Buendia family in a small town in Colombia continue to enthrall half a century on. Hauntings and premonitions allied to a journalistic eye for detail and a poetic sensibility make Marquez’s magical realism unique. 40 books to read while self-isolating The Trial, Frank Kafka “Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K…” So begins Kafka’s nightmarish tale of a man trapped in an unfathomable bureaucratic process after being arrested by two agents from an unidentified office for a crime they’re not allowed to tell him about. Foreshadowing the antisemitism of Nazi-occupied Europe, as well as the methods of the Stasi, KGB, and StB, it’s an unsettling, at times bewildering, tale with chilling resonance. 40 books to read while self-isolating Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier The second Mrs de Winter is the narrator of Du Maurier’s marvellously gothic tale about a young woman who replaces the deceased Rebecca as wife to the wealthy Maxim de Winter and mistress of the Manderley estate. There she meets the housekeeper Mrs Danvers, formerly devoted to Rebecca, who proceeds to torment her. As atmospheric, psychological horror it just gets darker and darker. 40 books to read while self-isolating The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa Published posthumously in 1958, Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel is set in 19th century Sicily, where revolution is in the air. The imposing Prince Don Fabrizio presides over a town close to Palermo during the last days of an old world in which class stratifications are stable and understood. Garibaldi’s forces have taken the island and a new world will follow. It’s a deep and poetic meditation on political change and the characters that it produces.

“Lovecraft,” he guessed, and then we were back in the car following him as he zag-zagged through a blur of mausoleums. Not for the first time that afternoon my girlfriend and her pals, who had driven us from Boston, were throwing me funny glances. What exactly were we all doing here?

Lovecraft has been my favourite author since I was a teenager. I’d discovered him first through tabletop role-playing game Call of Cthulhu, named after one of his best-known stories (in turn named after its famous octopus-headed demigod). At Mountains of Madness and Other Stories was the first Lovecraft book I’d purchased, from my local Waterstones with money saved during a summer spent potato picking at a nearby farm.

The connection made more sense than you might imagine. The sensation of kneeling in wet potato tubers, which spatter and spray slime in the manner of an HR Giger alien egg, has stayed with me. It and my memory of At the Mountains of Madness are inextricable linked. The sensory horror of flapping about in decaying tuber is bound up with reading for the first time of the doomed Dyer expedition to Antarctica, and its run-ins with giant penguins and evil sentient pudding.

At the risk of me sounding like a Nirvana fan who insisted they never did better than Bleach, it’s fair to say that the Lovecraft industry was in its formative stages when I discovered him. Even when I visited Providence and finally came upon his grave – it was surprisingly small and overshadowed by a nearby tree into which HPL fans had etched Cthulhu-themed graffiti – his reputation was still ascending. The stars were not yet quite right.

Giant penguins and evil sentient pudding: a portrait of Lovecraft (The HP Lovecraft Estate)

Today, by contrast, Lovecraft is mega-box office. Downstairs at the Forbidden Planet flagship store in London there is a dedicated Lovecraft section. It offers not just anthology after anthology of his work but literary tributes by other writers, card games, novelty children’s books and, of course, the ubiquitous plush Cthulhu teddy bear. No other genre writer receives such VIP treatment – not Tolkien, Rowling or George RR Martin.

Lovecraft fans are, moreover, legion. One of my weirdest ever journalistic experiences was interviewing Irish actor Jack Reynor, then best known for playing a vapid hunk in Transformers: Age of Extinction.

He copped my Miskatonic University T-shirt – the name of Lovecraft’s fictional university – and gushed about his fondness for the author and how he’d always wanted to bring HPL to the screen. A few heads turned when the jock-ish Reynor fetched up in Ari Aster’s pagan horror Midsommar recently but not mine. This guy had been with the programme quite a while.

Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro is another member of our little funny handshake coven. He sweated blood attempting to make a $150m adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness. Tom Cruise – who, as his Oprah couch-bouncing confirmed, knows all about conjuring terrifying forces beyond our understanding – was even attached at one point. Alas, the project fell apart as the thematically similar Prometheus quasi-flopped.

But at least Del Toro’s Cthulhu credentials were beyond questioning. The amphibious romantic lead of his gong-garnering The Shape of Water (2017) was essentially a derivation of Lovecraft’s water-dwelling race of Deep Ones. And when invited to direct a Simpsons title sequence, he made sure Cthulhu – all eight eyes present and correct – featured.

Guillermo del Toro creates couch gag for The Simpsons

Nicolas Cage has now joined the club and, really, it is no surprise. He has teamed up with Richard Stanley, who made the fantastic Hardware (1990) and Dust Devil (1992) and then was famously fired from 1996 Marlon Brando dumpster fire The Island of Doctor Moreau.

Together they have updated Lovecraft’s 1927 story The Colour Out of Space for the 21st century. As in the original text, the setting is a remote farm where a mysterious asteroid has crash-landed. The borders of reality warp. Soon locals are behaving peculiarly. And then things get nasty. Once again, I’m reminded of my summer picking potatoes.

If the premise sounds familiar it is because it has been plundered on multiple occasions. Every Cold War American sci-fi film in which an isolated community is overrun by extra terrestrials bears a little of its DNA. And the recent Netflix/Alex Garland adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation is essentially a big-budget homage to the Lovecraft yarn.

“It’s the story that inspired half the sci-fi movies of the 1950s,” Stanley said at a recent Q&A. “The Thing from Another World, The Blob...”

Yet the cult of Lovecraft has also brought attention to the author’s less savoury qualities. Raised in genteel poverty in Providence, he was an unabashed Anglophile who perceived himself as a British gentleman living in the wrong time and place. Unfortunately, he was under the impression that part of a British gentleman’s make-up was to be a bug-eyed xenophobe.

“A maze of hybrid squalor” is how he describes an ethnic neighbourhood of New York in his 1925 chiller The Horror at Red Hook. He writes of “Asian dregs” and the “swart, insolent” crew of a tramp steamer.

These descriptions are largely incidental. One could enjoy Red Hook with the racism expunged. Yet Lovecraft’s obsession with racial purity and the danger of tainting the blood lines is front and centre of some of his most important stories. Consider, my favourite, The Shadow over Innsmouth from 1931. It tells of an obscure New England fishing village where the locals have, through decades of miscegenation with Deep One fish-men from the South Seas, horrifically diluted their humanity.

Cosmic fright-fest: Joely Richardson and Nicolas Cage in ‘Colour Out of Space’ (XYZ Films)

Lovecraft’s evocation of a decaying fishing town is so acutely drawn you can almost smell the brine and the sea breeze. It’s a riveting read, too: the tension as the narrator clops around, gradually realising he has placed himself in terrible danger, tightens like razor wire around your neck.

Alas, the ultimate message that “superior” races must forbear from mingling with their lessers is the stuff of white supremacist fever dreams. I still love The Shadow over Innsmouth. But I’m not sure I would recommend it today.

A backlash was inevitable. The point of fracture was the World Fantasy Awards, a sort of Oscars for fantastical writing. Until 2016, the awards took the form of a bust bearing Lovecraft’s likeness. For authors of a minority background, having a HPL effigy on the shelf was understandably problematic.

“A statuette of this racist man’s head is in my home. A statuette of this racist man’s head is one of my greatest honours as a writer,” said Nigerian-American writer Nnedi Okorafor, the first black person to win the WFA for best novel. The trophy has since been redesigned: recipients of the prize no longer have to stare into the vacant visage of an author who approved of Hitler.

“The racism is a BIG problem with HPL as a person and it does pervade some of the stories,” says Julian Simpson, the writer, director and dramatist who adapted Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward as an acclaimed BBC podcast last year (a follow-up retelling of Lovecraft’s The Whisperer in Darkness debuts in December).

“Sometimes it’s overt, sometimes you feel like it’s in the subtext. I didn’t worry about it with Charles Dexter Ward because it’s not really present in the story anyway and because our adaptation is sufficiently loose to be able to avoid anything that might have been a problem.”

He feared nearly everything. I read an account of him nearly fainting from the site of a fish on a plate Paul Carrick

“His racism is an uncomfortable fact about him which can’t be denied and mustn’t be ignored,” adds fantasy and sci-fi writer James Lovegrove, who has made his own contribution to Lovecraftian lore by pitting Sherlock Holmes against the “mythos” in his fantastic Cthulhu Casebooks novels.

“He was a product of his times, yes, but even by those standards his views were pretty extreme. Even if we can separate the work from the man, it’s still there in the numerous references in his writings to ‘subhuman’ and ‘inferior’ races who are more susceptible than the ‘purer’ races to the gods’ evil influence. I attempted to tackle this in the second of my Cthulhu Casebooks trilogy, Sherlock Holmes and the Miskatonic Monstrosities, by having an overtly racist character get his comeuppance.

“But it’s a nettle I was extremely unwilling to grasp. We just have to accept, I feel, that Lovecraft himself was a pretty wretched individual whose misery and misanthropy somehow alchemised into fiction of lasting impact, influence and insight.”

Artist Paul Carrick, whose Lovecraftian illustrations have drawn considerable acclaim, agrees. “I cannot argue that Lovecraft did not have some racist feelings. Would I prefer it that he didn’t feel what he felt? Absolutely. Might we not have the stories as we know them if he was a model citizen of today’s standards? I bet we wouldn’t. His uncomfortable feelings were the sand in the oyster which created some incredible pearls.”

Lovecraft, as Carrick points out, wasn’t just a racist: he had all sorts of hang-ups. If there’s a phobia, he probably suffered it. “He feared nearly everything. He was afraid of change, and so immigrants were a source of change. He was afraid of the sea, which explains why so many of his creatures and alien races had aquatic elements within them. I read an account of him nearly fainting from the site of a fish on a plate.

“He more or less lived in a bubble for the first 20 or so years, and unfortunately many people born in the 1800s had racist views. I think we all like to imagine that if we were in his shoes we would act as if it were the present day, but I tend to regard this as wishful thinking.

“Fortunately, we can say that, as he got older, he started to experience more of the world and loosen his views about other races and cultures. He married a Jewish woman and also gained friends outside of his culture, both of which I would imagine was unthinkable to a younger Lovecraft.”

37 horror films that are genuinely scary Show all 37 1 /37 37 horror films that are genuinely scary 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Funny Games (1997) Directed by: Michael Haneke Funny Games places the horror in the familiar setting of home. It follows two young men who hold a family hostage and torture them with sadistic games. The result is far scarier than anything featuring ghosts, witches or demons. Concorde-Castle Rock/Turner 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Amityville Horror (1979) Directed by: Stuart Rosenberg The Amityville Horror is based on the true story of the Lutzes, a family who were run out of their home after being terrorised by paranormal phenomena in 1975. Just one year before, Ronald DeFeo Jr shot and killed six members of his family in the same house. James Brolin and Margot Kidder lead this film, which became one of the biggest hits of 1979. American International Pictures 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Audition (1999) Directed by: Takashi Miike Japanese horror Audition (1999) follows a widower who meets a woman named Ayoma after staging auditions to meet a potential new partner. Soon, though, her dark past begins to surface, which equates to a pretty disturbing climax. Omega Project 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Blair Witch Project (1999) Directed by: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez Although parodied to death, The Blair Witch Project popularised the found-footage format to terrifying degrees in 1999. People genuinely believed they were watching real clips of three student filmmakers being terrorised by a Maryland legend known as the Blair Witch. Artisan Entertainment 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) Directed by: Robert Wiene Black-and-white silent horror film The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) is considered the quintessential work of German Expressionism, but also one of the scariest films in cinema history. It follows a hypnotist (Werner Krauss) who uses a somnambulist to commit murders, and Wiene's shadowed sets and striking visual style combines to unsettle the viewer in ways most filmmakers only dream of managing. Decla-Bioscop 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Candyman (1992) Directed by: Bernard Rose A contemporary classic of horror cinema, 1992 film Candyman – which spawned two sequels and has a Jordan Peele-produced remake in the works – follows a graduate student whose studies lead her to the legend of a ghost who appears when you say his name three times. TriStar Pictures 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Cannibal Holocaust (1980) Directed by: Ruggero Deodato Extreme enough to warrant a ban in Italy and Australia, Cannibal Holocaust (1980) was one of the first films to embrace the found-footage format – so much so that Deodato found himself charged with multiple counts of murder due to rumours that several of the film's death scenes were real. He was later cleared. United Artists Europa 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Descent (2005) Directed by: Neil Marshall Released in 2005, The Descent follows six women who, upon exploring a cave, battle to survive against the creatures they find inside. It's these creatures that earn this British horror film's placement on this list. Pathé Distribution 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Exorcist (1973) Directed by: William Friedkin One of the most controversial films of all time, The Exorcist – which tells the story of the demonic possession of a 12-year-old girl named Regan (Linda Blair) – became the first horror to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars in 1974. Warner Bros 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Halloween (1978) Directed by: John Carpenter Sure, it may be dated, but John Carpenter's original Halloween film – released in 1978 – remains the daddy of all horrors. It re-defined the rule book and has been emulated in everything from Scream (1996) to Trick 'r Treat (2007). The tension, as babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) attempts to evade masked murderer Michael Myers, only heightens with every new watch. Compass International Pictures[ 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Hereditary (2018) Directed by: Ari Aster Proving that horror is a force to be reckoned with, Hereditary became independent distributor A24's highest-grossing film around the world upon its release in 2018. It tells the story of a family who find themselves haunted after the death of their secretive grandmother and features a final act that left many of its viewers with sleepless nights. A24 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The House of the Devil (2009) Directed by: Ti West The House of the Devil (2009) follows a student named Samantha who is hired to guard an isolated house with one rule: don't go upstairs. For most of the film's runtime, not much happens, which is what makes the action-packed final third so terrifying. Spoiler: she goes upstairs. MPI Media Group 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Innocents (1961) Directed by: Jack Clayton Based upon Henry James' chiller The Turn of the Screw, the plot of 1961 psychological horror film The Innocents concerns a governess who watches over two children and comes to fear that their large estate is haunted by ghosts and that the youngsters are being possessed. 20th Century Fox 37 horror films that are genuinely scary It (1986) Directed by: Tommy Lee Wallace Forget the effects-laden remake – this version of It, released as a miniseries in 1986, is the most terrifying adaptation of Stephen King's beloved novel to date. It follows a shapeshifting demon who takes the form of a sadistic child-killing clown named Pennywise (Tim Curry). Lorimar Productions 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Ju-On: The Grudge (2002) Directed by: Takashi Shimizu Japanese horror maestro Takashi Shimizu – who also directed the pretty scary 2005 remake starring Sarah Michelle Gellar – balances mystery with horror in Ju-On: The Grudge, a story based in a cursed house in Tokyo. Lions Gate Films 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Kill List (2011) Directed by: Ben Wheatley To describe the horrors of Kill List is to ruin the film's surprises, but let's just say this: the final 20 minutes of Ben Wheatley's violent drama from 2011 features some of the most unsettling scenes in any film from this decade. Optimum Releasing 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Lake Mungo (2008) Directed by: Joel Anderson Taking the form of a mockumentary, the little-seen Australian drama Lake Mungo may have received a limited release in 2008, but its story of a family attempting to come to terms with the drowning of their daughter stays with viewers long after. Arclight Films 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Martyrs (2008) Directed by: Pascal Laugier The polarising 2008 film Martyrs, often associated with the New French Extremity movement, is the kind of horror that leaves you needing a shower once the credits roll. It follows a young woman's quest for revenge on the people who kidnapped and tormented her as a child. Anchor Bay Films 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Night of the Living Dead (1968) Directed by: George A Romero Younger viewers may be desensitised by the more extreme horror films to have been released in recent decades, but the scares featured in Romero's Night of the Living Dead – including the young girl zombie reveal – remain some of the most chilling committed to celluloid. Continental Distributing 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Nosferatu (1922) Directed by: FW Murnau Alongside Cesare in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920), the character of vampire Count Orlok in 1922 film Nosferatu – played by Mac Schreck – remains one of the most spine-tingling in cinema history. Film Arts Guild 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Orphanage (2007) Directed by: JA Bayona Produced by Guillermo del Toro, this acclaimed 2007 chiller follows the disappearance of a young boy in an orphanage, which brings many of the building's terrifying secrets to the fore. Warner Bros Pictures de España 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Others (2001) Directed by: Alejandro Amenábar The Others (2001) is a towering achievement for Spanish filmmaker Alejandro Amenábar who wrote, directed and scored this Nicole Kidman-fronted tale about a woman trying to protect her children from supernatural forces. It's perhaps the scariest 12-certificate film of all time. Warner Sogefilms 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Paranormal Activity (2009) Directed by: Oren Peli Could Paranormal Activity be the scariest film of all time? It's certainly one of them. Just when you thought found-footage had had its day, Oren Peli's small-budgeted festival favourite became one of 2009's biggest hits. Audiences lapped up the story of a couple who capture supernatural presences on a camera in their own home. Paramount Pictures[ 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Paranormal Activity 3 (2011) Directed by: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman Paranormal Activity 3 earns its place on this list for its final 10 minutes. Set 18 years prior to the events of the first two films, we see the cause of the curse that follows characters Katie and Kristi for the rest of their lives – and it's down to a coven of witches led by their grandmother. Paramount Pictures 37 horror films that are genuinely scary [REC] (2007) Directed by: Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza Played out in real-time, the claustrophobic Spanish horror film [REC] is one of the better examples of found-footage cinema. Released in 2007, it follows a reporter and her cameraman who follow firefighters to a Barcelona building and soon find themselves locked inside with its occupants who are displaying murderous behaviour. Filmax International 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Ring (1998) Directed by: Hideo Nakata Unless you've been living under a rock, you know the story of Ring by now: viewers of a cursed videotape die seven days after watching it. While the inevitable Hollywood remake in 2002 was better than it had any right to be, Nakata's original is as terrifying as horror films come. Toho 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Rosemary's Baby (1968) Directed by: Roman Polanski Released in 1968, Rosemary's Baby follows a pregnant woman who suspects that an evil cult want to take her baby for use in their rituals. Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes and Ruth Gordon's performances tip this psychological chiller into classic status. Paramount Pictures 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Shining (1980) Directed by: Stanley Kubrick Forget the iconic "Heeeeere's Johnny" or that bath scene – it's the smaller moments that make Kubrick's 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining a terrifying watch, notably the trippy final act that sees Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) lose his mind to the Overlook Hotel. Warner Bros 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Sinister (2012) Directed by: Scott Derrickson Of all the Blumhouse horror films, 2012 release Sinister – which features the demonic character Bughuul – is the spookiest of them all. It stars Ethan Hawke as a true-crime writer who discovers a box of home movies depicting grisly murders in the attic of his new house. Momentum Pictures 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Sleep Tight (2011) Directed by: Jaume Balagueró This little-seen Spanish horror follows a concierge who, believing he was born without the ability to feel happiness, decides to make life hell for everyone around him. Filmax 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) Directed by: Tobe Hooper The fictional Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), marketed as a true story, follows a group of cannibals – including Leatherface – who relentlessly hunt down a group of friends. Vortex 37 horror films that are genuinely scary 28 Days Later (2002) Directed by: Danny Boyle Many might not reflect upon 28 Days Later (2002) as one of the world's scariest horror films, but its desolate depiction of a viral outbreak seems more real than any other. When merged with the fast-paced infected and the usage of John Murphy's song "In the House – In A Heartbeat", it's hard to deny it such status. Fox Searchlight Pictures 37 horror films that are genuinely scary V/H/S (2012) Directed by: Various Directed by six filmmakers, including Adam Wingard and Ti West, 2012 anthology film V/H/S is grimy horror of the tallest order. Look no further than David Bruckner's section "Amateur Night" following three friends who meet a mysterious girl who says nothing other than three small words: "I like you." Magnet Releasing 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Wailing (2016) Directed by: Na Hong-jin Twist-filled horror drama The Wailing follows a policeman who investigates a series of mysterious killings and illness in the mountains of South Korea. If the journey fails to scare you, its destination will leave you lying awake at night. 20th Century Fox Korea 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Wicker Man (1973) Directed by: Robin Hardy The Wicker Man is deemed the best British horror film of all time for a reason. It tells the story of a Police Sergeant who travels to an isolated island in search of a missing girl, only to find its inhabitants practising a form of Celtic paganism. British Lion Films 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Witch (2015) Directed by: Robert Eggers For the most part, it's not what you see in The Witch that terrifies, it's what you don't see. Eggers unsettlingly holds his camera a fraction too long in places as he retells the story of a Separatist family who encounter supernatural forces in the woods beyond their farm. A24 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Zero Day (2003) Directed by: Ben Coccio The horrors are all too real in Zero Day, a film inspired by the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. The majority of the film is portrayed through the video diaries of two students who are planning to attack their high school. Avatar Films

The World Fantasy Awards redesign has been almost universally welcomed. Ramsey Campbell, a doyen of British horror who has made his own contributions to the mythos, agrees that the feelings of authors should be respected.

“I was a judge at the first World Fantasy Awards back in 1975,” he says. “Kirby McCauley was my agent, and he was also one of the main organisers of the World Fantasy Convention, and responsible for choosing Lovecraft as the basis of the award. Since then I’ve received several, and eventually the Lifetime Award, which was in fact the last year that used Lovecraft’s image. I was and am proud to have them, not least because my old friend Gahan Wilson designed them with his typical dark humour.

“That said, I can understand why some candidates could feel offended or hurt by being considered for an award named for someone so dismissive of their race, and I wonder how I’d feel if I were one of them. On balance I think an award should give pleasure to the recipients, and so perhaps a neutral image is safer.”

Lovecraft died in 1937 at the age of 46. He was impoverished and utterly obscure. Decades would elapse before his stock would rise. One major catalyst was Sandy Petersen’s 1981 role-playing game Call of Cthulhu, which celebrated the pulpier elements of Lovecraft and cultivated a new generation of fans. Ever since, the cult has grown and grown.

“I like the fact that he’s dealing with something big and unknown and I like the mythos as an example of world-building,” says Julian Simpson. “He’s like dark Tolkien for me: a whole universe of horrors conjured from one person’s pen.”

“Lovecraft’s enduring popularity can seem strange, especially given that he had only modest literary success in his lifetime,” adds James Lovegrove. “Sometimes I think it’s a collective in-joke more than anything. People randomly alighted on a particular author who was fairly obscure and whose prose style was ungainly, to say the least, and decided to collaborate on making him posthumously famous by sharing, developing and expanding on his canon.”

But that’s a needlessly cynical view he feels. “More likely it’s the case that Lovecraft just hit on something, something universal that we all feel – a fear of unknown forces, a sense that in a world where capital-G God has lost much of His meaning and religion is used mostly for social control and fleecing its adherents, the only thing that makes sense is chaos.”