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Dennis Wheatley

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Dennis Wheatley interviewed in Titbits, No. 4541, 15-21 March, 1973.

The secret life of Dennis Wheatley
Thriller writer Dennis Wheatley looked at his wall map charting every journey he has made in 40 years of globe-trotting, and said: “There’s a very good reason why I’ve never been to Russia. During the war I was on the Joint Planning Staff of the War Cabinet, at Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s underground HQ, working on top level intellegence reports. And I was very much in the know. I’ve had nothing to do with Strategic Planning since then, and I’m completely out of touch with it all now – but the Russians aren’t to know that. They undoubtedly keep dossiers on people who have been engaged in Intellegence work – and they’ve probably got one on me. It would be very easy nowadays for somebody to slip something incriminating into my luggage and give the Russians an excuse to pull me in for questioning.
“Of course,” he said, smiling, “the odds of it happening are thousands to one against. But you never know … “
Did he regret not going to Russia? Mr Wheatley, a sprightly 76 with more than 75 novels to his credit, shook his head.
“Not at all,” he said. “Friends tell me it’s very expensive and frightfully uncomfortable and, at my age, you need a bit of comfort. You no sooner sit down to a meal in a restaurant, I’m told, than a waiter is telling you to hurry up as he wants to go off duty!” His tone makes it quite clear that in civilised countries waiters are seen but not heard.
Mr Wheatley, like his well-heeled thoroughbred heroes Roger Brook, Gregory Sallust and Duke de Richleau, belongs to the Bulldog breed that puts Queen and country at the top of their list of priorities.
Educated at a Margate boarding school and H.M.S. Worcester, Mr. Wheatley was brought up in an era when a gentleman observed Marquis of Queensberry rules and to be branded a coward was to be ostracised from society. He served as an Army officer in the first world was, was gassed and invalided out.
He went into the family’s Mayfair wine business which boasted among it’s clientele three kings, 21 princes, and the Duke of York (later King George VI).
Mr Wheatley – his clubs are Pratt’s, St. James’ and Paternosters – deplores the decline of gentlemanly conduct, but defends violence in his books as being an integral part of the thriller novel.
“My heroes are put in situations in which they must defend themselves or be killed,” he said. “I don’t put violence in my book for its own sake, nor do I write about fetishes, sadism, homosexulaity or perversions of that sort. But when Roger or Gregory get into a fight, I spin it out for five or six pages. You have to keep the suspense going, y’see. That’s the art of the game. But all this violence today is an alarming and unhealthy trend.”
He speaks of his heroes in such affectionate, avuncular terms that one almost expects that at may moment they will be shown into his study to tell him of their latest exploits in ridding the world of the Devil and his bestial henchmen. His newest recruit to the cause, Linda Lee, made her debut in The Strange Story Of Linda Lee.
“Linda’s a girl (he pronounces it ‘gel’) who gets herself involved in a robbery, for the best reasons of course, and she gets into some very tricky situations indeed, but aquits herself every bit as well as Roger of Gregory.”
Mr. Wheatley is now busy on a new Roger Brook adventure, called The Irish Witch, and set partly in America at the time of the Anglo-American War of 1812. He writes in longhand (in pencil so that he can rub out if necessary as he goes along) at a huge table in his Victorian flat in London’s fashionable Cadogan Square.
“Roger and his wife are caught up in the fighting,” he explained, as though reminiscing about old friends, “but, aided by Red Indians, they escape to Britain and later come up against the New Hellfire Club.”
Mr. Wheatley does his own research into the Occult and Black Arts, but it’s the Duke de Richleau whom he despatches to do battle with the dark forces of evil.
“I’ve never taken part in any ceremony connected with Magic, Black or White,” he admitted. “It’s far too dangerous.” Indeed, in a foreword to The Devil Rides Out, the Duke’s most famous confrontation with Satanism, Mr. Wheatley warns his readers against “being drawn into the practice of the Secret Arts in any way.”
The inquisitive, he said, are better advised to satisfy their curiosity by reading such works as his own The Devil And All His Works, a comprehensive record of his 40 years’ research.
“I’ve never had any direct experience of the Occult, but I do believe in the powers of Light and Darkness. I’ve researched telepathy, faith-healing, astrology, mediums, apparitions, mesmerism. You can’t just laugh them off – they do happen. I’ve met many practioners of the Black Arts – Aleister Crowley, Rollo Ahmed, Montague Summers – and I’m convinced that some are capable of summoning the powers of evil for their own selfish ends.
“Certainly, in Crowley’s case, there’s no doubt in my mind that he possessed occult powers. He could enter a crowded room, look at a stranger and say ‘That person was born in January.’ He’d be right, too.
“Occultism is a fascinating, but dangerous, game. If you get caught up in it your family and your career could suffer and you could even lose your sanity. Some of its weak-minded victims end up in asylums.”
Even genuine mediumship, he believes, is dangerous because “it’s a form of possession of one’s body by another spirit. It is a bad thing to surrender your own spirit.” But he does believe that reincarnation is the “only reasonable and logical” explanation of what happens after death.
“I believe we have as many earthly lives as we need to raise us to a higher plane of self-understanding and knowledge – then we are ready to go to some form of nirvana.
“It would be grossly unfair to crippled or handicapped people if we only have one life. The Eastern religions teach that one’s spirit is reincarnated every two hundred years … and, during that waiting period, one meets old friends and one’s relatives and one has a very enjoyable time of it.”
Black Magic may be dangerous for some, but for Mr. Wheatley it has been very lucrative indeed. A novel earns him something in the region of £10,000 and a perennial best-seller, such as The Devil Rides Out, which to date has sold 1,614,500 copies, probably earns him ten times that amount during its commercial lifetime. And, testifying to Mr. Wheatley’s evergreen popularity, none of his novels has ever gone out of print.
His first novel The Forbidden Territory, written “to keep me in wine and cigarettes” when he sold his family’s wine business in 1932, became an instant bestseller.
He turns out a book a year – each takes seven months to write – and then he and his wife spend two months travelling abroad. And, whether it’s to Lapland or Japan, he’ll be looking for new locations for his next thriller. “I don’t make notes on my travels,” he said. “They are too tedious. So I collect menus, hotel bills, museum catalogues, local street-guides, railway timetables and so on. Then, when I get home, I put them all in cellophane bags and label them and put them in storage in the basement. Then, a year or two later, I say to my secretary, ‘Bring me Chile’ or whatever, and there’s all the facts and local colour at my fingertips for my next book.”
So readable are his books to his fans that the demand is insatiable. Nine have topped the million sales mark; and many of the others have an annual sale of 80,000. “And I’ve never had a flop, touch wood!” he said, tapping his desk.
Even the encyclopaedia of the Occult, The Devil And All His Works, which retails at nearly £5, has sold 60,000 copies in two years.
Not bad going for an author who readily confesses, “My grammar and spelling are hopeless,” and who wrote his first book because he was hard up.
A devilishly clever fellow, Dennis Wheatley.
Dennis Wheatley was interviewed by Tony Wilmot

Punks For Christ

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A punk vicar in Sounds letters page, 10 September, 1977.

Punk Saves
As a modern priest, I have long been an avid follower of the pop scene. I am well aware that, at the moment, it is rather unfashionable to confess faith in Lord Jesus. What a pity that is!
Personally I consider myself something of a “punk vicar”. I regularly attend concerts by groups that specialise in new wave songs and, unlike many of my colleagues, I find the tunes both meaningful and charismatic. I like to think that there is a growing sense of community and love emerging with “the young generation”. I do think that it is most irresponsible of papers such as SOUNDS to encourage teenagers to lead a shallow directionless existence. Now, more than ever, is the time to turn back to the Good Lord who was, all said and done, the first punk.
Yes, it’s true, Jesus was a headbanger! He was oppressed by the Establishment in his time just as Johnny Rotten is today. Surely His Word still holds meaning in this year of troubles and unemployment? Why can’t we all come together again in His Love? After all, it was certainly “No Fun” for Him at the time.
I am organising a youth group that will unite all teenagers in His Love and Mercy. We are already fifty strong and proud to declare ourselves “Punks for Christ”. – The Reverend Darcy Braddell, founder “Punks For Christ”, Highgate.

Alexei Sayle Live

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The lad himself in Melody Maker, 7 April, 1984.

Alexei Sayle
Liverpool Playhouse

Do these things make you laugh? A glove puppet attacking a person’s private parts. Impersonations. Funny voices. Swear words. Hit singles for encores.
They would have done this time. Alexei Sayle can make any of these not only riotously funny, but fresh, inevitable, and totally his own.
I’ve always had doubts about stand-up comedy, but the hour and a half from Alexei Sayle (plus one musician/tape operator for backing on various “numbers”) is only just that. For a start his limbs are never in one place long enough to qualify as “standing up”, though we all know by now there should be enough bulk to stabalise them. Actions in this case do speak as loud as words (and that’s loud), and Alexei’s body is as outrageously, obscenely eloquent as his voice, whether he’s becoming a model for a Littlewoods catalogue, a Russian ventriloquist, a cockroach, or a statue of Lenin calling a taxi.
If Alexei makes Derek and Clive sound like Morecambe and Wise, it’s not shocking, just part of the character. He builds the speech of the common man into a surreal rhythm that soon tramples logic in the rush, jumping from subject to subject in an increasingly breakneck and bewildering momentum. His manic malevolence is sprayed equally at all targets, including the audience (“There’s a bit of random vituperation for you”) and himself (“Fat bastard”). It’s a healthy venom with an openness that puts the sly prejudice of the old guard to shame: “I’m a non-sexist, non-racist comedian – f*** off you Nazi c***.”
You suspect in fact that the stylised disgust is motivated by the same disenchantment that gives him his political bias. Alexei Sayle’s kind of comedy has more truth in it than most, but while the class system is good material there’s food for thought in some of his observations, this is firstly about entertainment. Ideologically sound, but primarily hilarious.
Themes cover the culture of his audience and the cultures that touch upon it., from the council estates of Liverpool to “The Wine Bars Of Hampstead” (one of his “songs”). Though the range is broad, there are obvious reference points: left-wing politics, rock music, cars. Easy laughs: Tebbit, Thatcher, Reagan, Duran Duran, Ozzy Osbourne, red balloons.
Another easy laugh is football. “That’s not funny, just topical” comments Alexei as the laughter dies down. Watching him, in fact, is a lesson in comedy. Firstly, because he does it so well – the laughs never stop – and secondly because he provides his own commentary continually placing himself within a tradition only to prove how far his place is outside of it. He reminds us of the competition: “Racial hatred and a chicken dinner for under £2”.
The only competition, really, is his own. “This is not as good as the video,” he pants, improvising wildly through “Ullo John! Gotta New Motor?”. Alexei Sayle’s kind of comedy tells the truth. But not always!
Penny Kiley