The earlier titles are often hard to find in good condition, with his key works such as The Drowned World (1962), The Atrocity Exhibition (1970) and Crash (1973) being particularly sought-after in first edition.

Film adaptations have ensured his popularity among various generations over the decades, notably the David Cronenberg film Crash (1996), the above-mentioned Spielberg movie Empire of the Sun (1987, featuring a young Christian ‘Batman’ Bale) and more recently the Ben Wheatley adaptation of High-Rise (2015) starring Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons and Sienna Miller.

Terrifying in his ordinariness, like the protagonists of his high-rises and drowned worlds, like the man on the motorway island – Neil Gaiman