Phil Baker – The Devil is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley

Phil Baker – The Devil is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley (Dedalus, October 31st, 2009)

Cover design: Jonathan Barker

Blurb
One of the giants of popular fiction, with total sales of around fifty million books, Dennis Wheatley held twentieth-century Britain spellbound. His Black Magic novels like The Devil Rides Out created an oddly seductive and luxurious vision of Satanism, but in reality he was as interested in politics as occultism. Wheatley was closely involved with the secret intelligence community, and this powerfully researched study shows just how directly this drove his work, from his unlikely warnings about the menace of Satanic Trade Unionism to his role in a British scheme to engineer a revival of Islam.

Drawing on a wealth of unpublished material, Phil Baker examines Wheatley’s key friendship with a fraudster named Eric Gordon Tombe, and uncovers the full story of his sensational 1922 murder. Baker also explores Wheatley’s relationships with occult figures such as Rollo Ahmed, Aleister Crowley, and the Reverend Montague Summers, the shady priest and demonologist who inspired the memorably evil character of Canon Copely-Syle, in To The Devil – A Daughter.

Like Sax Rohmer and John Buchan, Wheatley has now moved from being perceived as dated to positively vintage, and this groundbreaking biography offers a major reassessment of his significance and status.

Click on the cute Dedalus logo for more info …..

….. and then buy it for me for Christmas! :)

The Hutchinson ‘Century’ Books

Hutchinson ‘Century of’ Omnibuses: 26 volumes, 1934-1938

Grateful thanks to Richard Humphreys who provided us with beautiful dust-jacket scans of the relevant entries. Mr. Humphreys’ Dennis Wheatley site was a forerunner to Bob Rothwell’s, and both can be found at Dennis Wheatley Info. It’s Richard’s listing i’ve referred to for dates and various snippets of information.

1934

• Creepy Stories
• Humour (ed. P. G. Wodehouse)
• Evening Standard Book Of Strange Stories
• Sea Stories (ed. Rafael Sabatini)

1935

• Love Stories (ed. Gilbert Frankau)
• Detective Stories (introduced by G. K. Chesterton)
• Famous Trials (ed. 1st Earl Of Birkenhead)
• 1001 Wonderful Things (ed. Walter Hutchinson)
• Book Of The King’s Jubilee (ed. Sir Philip Gibbs)
• Horror (ed. Dennis Wheatley)
• Boys Stories (ed. Francis Brett Young)
• 50 Years of Ghost Stories
• Girls Stories (ed. Ethel Boileau)
• Historical Stories (ed. Rafael Sabatini)

1936

• Western Stories (ed. George Goodchild)
• Ghost Stories [ed. Dorothy M. Thomlinson ?]
• Holiday Omnibus For All Seasons
• Holiday Omnibus For Christmas
• 2nd Century Of Humour (ed. ‘Fougasse’)
• Cavalcade Of History (ed. Claud Golding)

1937

• Evening Standard 2nd Book Of Strange Stories
• Nature Stories (ed. J. W. Robertson Scott)
• 2nd Century Of Creepy Stories (ed. Hugh Walpole)

1938

• The Fireside Omnibus
• 2nd Cavalcade Of History (ed. Claud Golding)
• More Famous Trials (ed. 1st Earl Of Birkenhead)

Even in those instances where an editor is credited, E. F. Bleiler warns against taking the attribution too seriously, so although Dennis Wheatley’s name found it’s way onto the cover of A Century Of Horror he may have had little to do with it beyond providing an introduction. From what we know of his “involvement” in the Dennis Wheatley Library Of The Occult series for Sphere forty years later, this doesn’t sound altogether unlikely. Intriguingly, Bleiler also wonders if Cynthia Asquith had some hand in compiling a few of them, in which case the prime suspect would be A Century Of Creepy Stories. Essentially, …. Creepy compiles the contents of Asquith’s The Ghost Book, When Churchyards Yawn and The Black Cap, loans Oscar Cook and ‘Flavia Richardson’ from the Not At Night series, and throws in a number of genre classics to keep everybody happy.

A Century Of Ghost Stories (1936) is a much extended edition of the previous year’s Fifty Years Of Ghost Stories. The more generous of the uncredited editors is often cited as Dorothy M. Thomlinson.

The Daily Express tried to muscle in on the Century action with two clones A Century Of Thrillers From Poe to Arlen and A Century Of Thrillers – Second Series (Odhams, 1934, 1935)

Dennis Wheatley – Uncanny Tales 1

Dennis Wheatley (ed.) – Uncanny Tales 1 [# 9] (Sphere, 1974)

Sheridan Le Fanu – Carmilla
Wilkie Collins – The Dream Woman
Sir Walter Scott – The Tapestried Chamber
Mrs Oliphant – The Open Door
Washington Irving – The Spectre Bridegroom
Edgar Allen Poe – Ligeia
Théophile Gautier – Clarimonde

Thanks to Bob Rothwell of Dennis Wheatly Info for providing the list of contents. RIP, Bob.

Dennis Wheatley – Satanism and Witches

Dennis Wheatley (ed.) – Satanism and Witches : Essays and Stories: [# 21] (Sphere, 1974)

Benvenuto Cellini – My Experiences In Necromancy
Sax Rohmer – The Witch Finders
William Godwin – The Lancashire Witches
Robert Anthony – The Witch-Baiter
Ronald Seth – The Chambre Ardente Affair
Margaret Murray – An Initiation To Witchcraft
P. T. Barnum – The Spell On witchcraft
Cotton Mather – The Tryals Of The New England Witches
Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Salem Mass
Aleister Crowley – The Black Lodge
Betty May – The Sacrifice
Elliott O’Donnell – Sylvan Horrors
Elliott O’Donnell – Vampires, Werewolves, Fox-Women, etc.
Robert Graves – Modern Witchcraft
Anonymous – An Indictment For Witchcraft
Anonymous – A Pact With The Devil
Anonymous – How To Raise A Spirit
Anonymous – The Black Goat Of Brandenberg
Anonymous – The Confession Of The Witches Of Elfdale
Dennis Wheatley – White And Black Magic
Dennis Wheatley – The Black Art And The Supernatural
Dennis Wheatley – The Witches’ Sabbath
Dennis Wheatley – The Black Mass
Dennis Wheatley – The Devil’s Secret Societies
Dennis Wheatley – Foretelling The Future
Anonymous – The Secret Grimoire Of Turiel

Its worth comparing Satanism & Witches with Peter Haining’s The Necromancers of which this is almost a wholesale rip-off!

Thanks to the much Bob Rothwell of Dennis Wheatly Info for providing the list of contents.

Dennis Wheatley – Uncanny Tales 3

Dennis Wheatley (ed.) – Uncanny Tales 3 [# 37] (Sphere, 1976)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – Playing With Fire
F. Tennyson Jesse – The Canary
Theodore Dreiser – The Hand
Louis Golding – The Call Of The Hand
Hugh Walpole – The Snow
H.R. Wakefield – Lucky’s Grove
Edith Wharton – Afterward
W.W. Jacobs – The Monkey’s Paw
Dennis Wheatley – The Snake
Frank Harris – The Miracle Of The Stigmata
Algernon Blackwood – The Trod

Thanks to Bob Rothwell of Dennis Wheatly Info for providing the list of contents.

Dennis Wheatley – Uncanny Tales #2

Dennis Wheatley  – Uncanny Tales #2 (Sphere, 1974)

Arthur Machen – The Great God Pan
W.B. Seabrook – The Witch’s Vengeance
E.F.Benson – Gavon’s Eve
L.P. Hartley – Feet Foremost
Walter de la Mare – All Hallows
Ex-Private X – Smee
William Younger – The Angelus
Dennis Wheatley – A Life For A Life

Thanks to George/ Illustrated Man for providing the list of contents and the late, great Bob Rothwell for providing the scan.

Paperback Fanatic 9

Man, this is so hot through the letterbox, I haven’t even managed to extract it from the envelope!

Justin Marriott (ed.) – Paperback Fanatic #9 (February 2009)

A quick flick through before i settle down to actually read the thing, and what immediately catches the eye? Plenty! There’s a lengthy feature on The Man From O.R.G.Y. and his fellow international men of mystery as “The Fanatic dives into the world of sexy spies and double-d double agents.’ Curt Purcell of the incomparable Beyond The Groovy Age Of Horror investigates The Twilight World Of Eli Podgram, star of Nel’s six-part ‘Specialist’ series from the early ‘seventies. There’s an interview with and overview of Peter Tremayne’s career as a horror, fantasy and Crime author and John Mains’ interrogates Chris Lowder about his Mills & Boon Blood Of Dracula outing as Jack Hamilton Teed. Bootboys and Bovver girls are as well catered for as man or woman can ever be with Skinhead Revival: Richard Allen and his delinquent spawn unleashed across seven pages, one of which is commandeered by a certain Franklin ‘Suedehead’ Marsh! As you maybe guessed from the cover, the featured classic artist of the issue is Nel/ Mayflower serial offender Richard Clifton-Day and, of course, there is Fanatical Thoughts, the unmissable letters department, and a right old fiends reunited affair it is with loads of names familiar from this board offering their support and encouragement. Fanatical Thoughts is my absolute favourite department of any publication you care to mention.

As you’re no doubt aware, Justin is currently being kept very occupied by baby Sophie (wish you well, little one) so “No chance to update the PF site, but maybe you could mention £5.25 inc postage by paypal to my e-mail address and to pm me if they don’t know it.”

The email address is justinATjustincultprint.free-online.co.uk (replace the AT with @, obviously. Anti-spam precaution)

Thank you Justin!

Vote In The Wordsworth Editions Poll!

It’s one of the enduring mysteries surrounding the awards that horror people are so fond of bestowing upon one another: Why  Wordsworth Editions, arguably the best thing to happen to the genre in the noughties,  are so notably absent from each and every nominations list? Over the past few years their ludicrously tiny staff have been responsible for reissuing long sought novels and collections by the likes of R. Murray Gilchrist, Marjorie Bowen, Dennis Wheatley, May Sinclair, G. W. M. Reynolds and Mrs. Everett at a budget price (most of their stock retails at £2.99) and now here’s YOUR chance to have a shout in which authors they publish in 2010!

There are two polls: one comprising twenty authors whose work is out of copyright from which you may select up to five to be considered for publication in the ‘Mystery & The Supernatural’ series.

The second is limited to five authors – H. R. Wakefield, L. T. C. Holt, A. M. Burrage, Hugh Walpole & Arthur Machen – from whom you may select the two you’d most like to see back in print.

also, our friends at Wordsworth have kindly stumped up for a lucky dip!

“As a token of our thanks, everyone who votes in our poll (or has previously contributed a suggestion through email) will be put into a lucky dip, and 2 of you will win £50 of Amazon vouchers to use as you wish (although if you want to spend them on Wordsworth books, that’s fine with us!)”

Details on the Vault of Evil forum (i’m afraid you’ll have to register: don’t worry – just delete your account at the end of February once you’ve been entered for the lucky dip!)

Polls close on 28th February 2009 so get in quick!

Choose wisely, now.

Direct Links

Out of copyright
Still in copyright

Wordsworth Editions

Peter Haining – The Mammoth Book of True Hauntings

Peter Haining – The Mammoth Book of True Hauntings (Robinson, 2008)

photo Tony O’Reilly/ Fortean Picture Library: Cover design: JoeRoberts.co.uk

Foreword: I Am A Researcher Of The Supernatural

A Century Of Hauntings: A Chronology from 1900-2000
The Ghost Hunters: Fifty Authentic Supernatural Experiences
Phantoms In The Sky: Ghostly Pilots, Aircraft And Haunted Airfields
Encounters With The Unknown: Eyewitness Stories By Journalists
Haunted Stars: Show Business And The Supernatural
Supernatural Tales: True Ghost Stories By Famous Authors
Phantom Lovers: Sexual Encounters With Ghosts
What Are Ghosts? The Theories Of The Experts
The A-Z Of Ghosts: Phantoms Of The World

Bibliography
Research Organisations
Acknowledgements

Back cover blurb:

Surprisingly, the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have turned out to be the most extraordinary periods in the history of supernatural encounters – with more mysterious accounts of ghosts being reported from all over the world than during any previous era.

This giant survey from the acclaimed investigator, the late Peter Haining, years in the making and now posthumously published for the first time, documents the full spectrum of credible hauntings during the last hundred years or so. It encompasses over 100 first-hand accounts of poltergeists and phantoms, ghostly pilots and haunted airfields, seduction spirits and sexual encounters with ghostly entities – and much more. Also included are the notes of famous ghost hunters such as Hans Holzer, Harry Price, and Susy Smith; and some fascinating analysis by notable experts on what ghosts really are.

How appropriate that, as we approach November 19th and the first anniversary of his untimely death, the legendary Peter Haining should return from the grave with a collection of True Hauntings.

Experts will doubtless be mortified that Peter has exhumed several of these ‘true’ accounts from such reliable resources as The News Of The World and The Sunday People, but he’s also ransacked his library to good effect for accounts from (perhaps!) more credible authorities, several old Vault friends among them: Dennis Wheatley (on the true life incident at boarding school which inspired his big seller, The Haunting Of Toby Jugg), Arthur Machen (versus a Poltergeist infestation), Barbara Cartland, James Herbert, Robert Thurston Hopkins, Fred Archer, Elliott O’Donnell, Peter Underwood and medium to the stars Doris Stokes.

Predictably, the NOTW is the source for much of the Phantom Lovers: Sexual Encounters With Ghosts section which reads for the most part like a series of plot-outlines for Benny Hill sketches as the country’s struggling pubs are besieged by randy Royalists, Peeping Toms, Phantom Bottom-pinchers – the whole gamut of sex pests from beyond the grave. Typical of these “Grinning Ghouls”, the spectre in the changing room of The Disco Bar, Newcastle who so put the willies up go-go dancer Maggie in 1974, and an incorrigible old rascal who conducted his reign of terror in The Knights Lodge Inn near Corby during the ‘eighties. “I’ve seen him and he’s a big robust chap – a cavalier who carries an ostrich feather. He uses the feather to lift the ladies’ skirts and tickle them – he must have been a real Casanova when he was alive” deadpans a handy ‘Psychic Investigator’, Jean Cooksley. The vast majority of these encounters feature male spooks mithering Miss GB contestants and dolly birds, although The Sun (who else?) can provide a “scantily clad” (what else?) female phantom who steals the discarded clothing of courting couples should they frolic in her Hertfordshire field.

Spectre smitten, pop chanteuse Lynsey De Paul: Her Eurovision Song Contest hopes hit “Rock Bottom” in spooky circumstances!

As those of us who’ve been terrified out of our wits by The Weekend Book of Ghosts & Horror will know to our cost, saccharine-coated songstress Linsey de Paul is arguably the most haunted women in the history of pop and here we learn of another chilling episode in her troubled career – the case of the haunted headphones that so disrupted the fabled Rock Bottom sessions. Another haunted celebrity is William Shatner – and not just by his inspired incursion into the music world, The Transformed Man. Here he recalls his brush with death on a motorcycling tour where it could well have been all up for him had it not been for the intervention of a phantom biker.

I’ve only had the book a day and, doubtless, will have some more woeful comment to make as I progress, but it’s proving a most diverting read. One to file alongside his outrageous but scandalously entertaining ‘non-fiction’ accounts of The Legend & Bizarre Crimes of Spring-Heeled Jack and The Mystery & Horrible Murders of Sweeney Todd!

Peter Haining – Mammoth Modern Ghost Stories

Peter Haining (ed) – The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories (Robinson, 2007)

Cover: Joe Roberts

1. Raising Spectres: The Modern Tradition

M.R. James – ‘Oh Whistle, and I’ll Come To You, My Lad’
A.C. Benson – The House at Treheale
E.G. Swain – The Richpins
Arthur Gray – The Everlasting Club
A.N.L. Munby – Number Seventy-Nine

2. Ghost Writers: The “Golden Era”

Arthur Conan Doyle: Playing With Fire
Rudyard Kipling – The House Surgeon
John Buchan – The Grove Of Ashtroth
Somerset Maugham – The Man from Glasgow
D.H. Lawrence – The Last Laugh
Vladimir Nabokov – A Visit to the Museum

3. Phantom Ranks: Supernatural at War

Arthur Machen – The Bowmen
George Minto – The Ghost of U65
Algernon Blackwood – ‘Vengeance is Mine’
Lord Dunsany – The Punishment
Dennis Wheatley – The Haunted Chateau
Elizabeth Bowen – Pink May
Derek Barnes – A Gremlin in the Beer
Sir Alec Guinness – Money For Jam

4. The Ghost-Feelers: Modern Gothic Tales

Edith Wharton – The Lady’s Maid’s Bell
Marie Belloc Lowndes – The Duenna
Eudora Welty – Clytie
Daphne du Maurier – The Pool
Jane Gardam – A Spot of Gothic

5. Entertaining Spooks: Supernatural High Jinks

H.G. Wells – The Inexperienced Ghost
Alexander Wolcott – Full Fathom Five
James Thurber – The Night the Ghost Got In
Eric Keown – Sir Tristram Goes West
Kingsley Amis – Who or What Was It?
Ray Bradbury – Another Fine Mess

6. Christmas Spirits: Festive Season Chillers

Rider Haggard – Only a Dream…
Edith Nesbit – The Haunted House
E.F. Benson – The Light in the Garden
Marjorie Bowen – The Prescription
Howard Spring – Christmas Honeymoon
Hammond Innes – South Sea Bubble
Peter Ackroyd – Ringing in the Good News

7. Haunting Times: Tales of Unease

Fritz Leiber – Smoke Ghost
A.E. Van Vogt – The Ghost
William F. Nolan – The Party
J.B. Priestley – Underground
Joyce Carol Oates – Haunted
Philip Pullman – Video Nasty
Louis de Bernieres – My Beautiful House

Blurb:

This spine-chilling new anthology of 20th and 21st century tales by big name writers is in the best traditions of literary ghost stories. It is just a little over a hundred years ago that the most famous literary ghost story, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, was published and in the intervening years a great many other distinguished writers have tried their hand at this popular genre – some basing their fictional tales on real supernatural experiences of their own.

See Vault of Evil forum on Mammoth Book Of Modern Ghost Stories