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The Devil is a Gentleman: The Life and times of Dennis Wheatley
"It is not only the Hammer films based on Dennis Wheatley's novels that are full-blooded, sensational entertainment, so was Wheatley's life, brilliantly evoked by Phil Baker. This gripping biography draws out all the comedy from Wheatley's history, from his childhood in a family of wine merchants who were dedicated to social climbing (the scrambling for status never left Wheatley either, even in his 70's he was proudly joining gentlemen's clubs such as White's) to his experiences in World War One. Wheatley's main ambition as a soldier was to join a socially acceptable regiment, but the Westminster Dragoons wouldn't have him because he couldn't ride (he claimed that he could but his first time on a horse rather exposed this lie), he was too short for the Artist's Rifles and so he ended up in the Artillery. He spent most of the War attending training camps and hunting for casual sex (and writing his first, unpublished, novel), before being sent to the Western Front in 1917. A business disaster, along with the Depression, led him to turn his attention to writing novels as a means of escaping penury (an unconventional idea for becoming rich) and after selling 50 million books he succeeded. Wheatley lived on a grand scale, rather like a real-life bon vivant James Bond, of fine dining, expensive wines and even more expensive cigars. Phil Baker captures Wheatley's personality, as well as the lurid extremes of his novels (their occult settings, the constant promise of orgies and threats to virgins). For such a detailed book The Devil is a Gentleman is astonishingly readable, as page-turning as Wheatley's own novels.James Doyle in Book Munch
700 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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August 2, 2022This is a really tremendous and comprehensive biography, way beyond what Wheatley as prose stylist or human being deserved. But he was a towering figure of popular writing, and he pretty much invented a large chunk of the British occult as it is now, plus it's absolutely fascinating. The depth and indeed length allows the author to delve into the wine trade (fascinating), Wheatley's relationship with a criminal who feels like a 1920s book character, his shenanigans in both wars including being part of the deception teams that helped D-Day happen, and of course the business of being a mega-author.
Which he was, for all we now vaguely think 'oh that was the black magic bloke, right?' He sold millions. In the mid 60s, he single-handedly represented 15% of Hutchinson's turnover. Apparently Giles Gordon's first act on starting at Hutchinson was to send a Wheatley MS to a reader without the name, get an inevitably negative review, and go tell the boss that Wheatley's books were terrible schlock (as if he didn't know) and shouldn't be published. (I note he didn't refuse 15% of his salary, or agree to drop 15% of the literary novels he liked that sold 700 copies and could only be published because Wheatley sales propped the firm up.)
Obv, Wheatley's books were indeed terrible, terrible schlock. There's a very funny story of someone commenting that his books had been translated into every European language but one, to which someone else suggested, "English?" And let's not even talk about the attitudes to sex and women and the racism and Wheatley's many other unappealing characteristics (all fully acknowledged here and mostly treated with thought). This is definitely not a hagiography, how could it be, but it's a hugely interesting read, written in a very lively style with some absolutely cracking jokes (the deadpan line re his predictable reaction to the Black Panther movement, "Wheatley was far from keen on bad motherfuckers", made me howl).
Which he was, for all we now vaguely think 'oh that was the black magic bloke, right?' He sold millions. In the mid 60s, he single-handedly represented 15% of Hutchinson's turnover. Apparently Giles Gordon's first act on starting at Hutchinson was to send a Wheatley MS to a reader without the name, get an inevitably negative review, and go tell the boss that Wheatley's books were terrible schlock (as if he didn't know) and shouldn't be published. (I note he didn't refuse 15% of his salary, or agree to drop 15% of the literary novels he liked that sold 700 copies and could only be published because Wheatley sales propped the firm up.)
Obv, Wheatley's books were indeed terrible, terrible schlock. There's a very funny story of someone commenting that his books had been translated into every European language but one, to which someone else suggested, "English?" And let's not even talk about the attitudes to sex and women and the racism and Wheatley's many other unappealing characteristics (all fully acknowledged here and mostly treated with thought). This is definitely not a hagiography, how could it be, but it's a hugely interesting read, written in a very lively style with some absolutely cracking jokes (the deadpan line re his predictable reaction to the Black Panther movement, "Wheatley was far from keen on bad motherfuckers", made me howl).
May 19, 2020
Phil Baker has done an excellent job with this biography, and that was exactly why I stopped enjoying it halfway through. Dennis Wheatley's personality was deftly drawn, and he made for unpleasant company.
Like most kids of my generation with an interest in the occult, I was impressed by Wheatley's novels as a kid. Truth to tell, I've still got a soft spot for The Devil Rides Out (Duke de Richleau, #6), and it's impossible not to love the Hammer film version. As Baker drily notes, no one in the occult world wants to admit to being influenced by Wheatley, but everyone is suspiciously knowledgeable about what his books are like.
But when you reread those books as a grown-up, you realise in short order that they are narrow-minded, racist, misogynist, parochial, snobbish, inept, and often tedious. What's puzzling is that Wheatley seems to have been drawn to occultist themes but to have had no understanding of them. His stories stir oddly well-informed morsels of terminology into a soup of hostile incomprehension. So what the hell was going on there?
It was to answer that question that I read this biography.
The answer seems simply to be that Wheatley was a right-wing conspiracy theorist – and I mean very right-wing, genuinely fascist, at least until World War II. He wasn't interested in the occult for its own sake; it was just grist to his political mill. Like right-wing conspiracy nuts before and since, he wove an imaginary cabal of black magicians into a narrative that was also populated by Communists, anarchists, "Communazis", sexual degenerates, and more or less anybody that wasn't white.
That narrative wasn't just the stuff of novels. As far as Wheatley was concerned, it was for real – an opinion that, according to Baker, was shared by a lot of the British ruling class at the time, including members of British intelligence.
Once I figured that out, I lost interest. And although Wheatley's pre-war life featured some lurid episodes to rival his novels, when he started to become a (semi-)respectable success, his life – and this book – turned into an endless round of club lunches and Society parties with people as ghastly as he was.
It's a cliché that biographers come to dislike their subjects. I've certainly read some biographies where that appeared to be the case (Our Three Selves: The Life Of Radclyffe Hall springs to mind, for example). Somehow Baker manages to get all the way through Wheatley's long life without falling into disdain or contempt, despite Wheatley's many obvious flaws. The final pages, with their account of Wheatley's death, display touching kindness on Baker's part.
So there you have it. A generous, intelligent book about a man whose own books were neither.
Like most kids of my generation with an interest in the occult, I was impressed by Wheatley's novels as a kid. Truth to tell, I've still got a soft spot for The Devil Rides Out (Duke de Richleau, #6), and it's impossible not to love the Hammer film version. As Baker drily notes, no one in the occult world wants to admit to being influenced by Wheatley, but everyone is suspiciously knowledgeable about what his books are like.
But when you reread those books as a grown-up, you realise in short order that they are narrow-minded, racist, misogynist, parochial, snobbish, inept, and often tedious. What's puzzling is that Wheatley seems to have been drawn to occultist themes but to have had no understanding of them. His stories stir oddly well-informed morsels of terminology into a soup of hostile incomprehension. So what the hell was going on there?
It was to answer that question that I read this biography.
The answer seems simply to be that Wheatley was a right-wing conspiracy theorist – and I mean very right-wing, genuinely fascist, at least until World War II. He wasn't interested in the occult for its own sake; it was just grist to his political mill. Like right-wing conspiracy nuts before and since, he wove an imaginary cabal of black magicians into a narrative that was also populated by Communists, anarchists, "Communazis", sexual degenerates, and more or less anybody that wasn't white.
That narrative wasn't just the stuff of novels. As far as Wheatley was concerned, it was for real – an opinion that, according to Baker, was shared by a lot of the British ruling class at the time, including members of British intelligence.
Once I figured that out, I lost interest. And although Wheatley's pre-war life featured some lurid episodes to rival his novels, when he started to become a (semi-)respectable success, his life – and this book – turned into an endless round of club lunches and Society parties with people as ghastly as he was.
It's a cliché that biographers come to dislike their subjects. I've certainly read some biographies where that appeared to be the case (Our Three Selves: The Life Of Radclyffe Hall springs to mind, for example). Somehow Baker manages to get all the way through Wheatley's long life without falling into disdain or contempt, despite Wheatley's many obvious flaws. The final pages, with their account of Wheatley's death, display touching kindness on Baker's part.
So there you have it. A generous, intelligent book about a man whose own books were neither.
August 23, 2025
Too much ‘times of’ and not enough ‘life of’ Wheatley. Started off ok but got progressively more boring as it droned on.
September 6, 2011
Phil Baker’s biography of Dennis Wheatley, The Devil is a Gentleman, is almost as much fun as Wheatley’s books.
There are some authors whose works really do take on an added resonance when you know something of the author’s life and personality, and that’s definitely the case with Wheatley.
Wheatley’s black magic books always included the famous disclaimer at the front, assuring his readers that he had never personally participated in occult activities and earnestly warning of the dangers. An amazing number of people took this at face value, and combined with Wheatley’s reputation as a political reactionary a picture was formed of Wheately as a rather Colonel Blimp-ish figure. In fact Wheatley was far more sympathetic to the occult than his public image would have suggested and he was always hostile to Christianity.
Also at variance with his popular image was his flirtation with crime in the aftermath of the First World War. He became very friendly with a notorious confidence trickster named Tombe and if Wheatley was not directly involved in criminal activities he was certainly an accessory after the fact. Tombe was later murdered.
Wheatley’s background was solidly middle-class which undoubtedly explained his well-known snobbery. His snobbery seems to have been an amusing quirk rather than a truly offensive attitude and he comes cross as being essentially a kind and courteous man. His military service in the First World War was undistinguished but he was popular with the men under his command because he always treated them decently.
Baker doesn’t gloss over Wheatley’s faults but it’s clear that he regards him with quite a bit of affection. He also resists the temptation to be supercilious about Wheatley’s abilities a writer. Despite his shoddy prose style Wheatley knew how to construct a thriller and how to keep his reader’s interest and to his credit he never made the mistake of thinking of himself as anything other than a writer of popular fiction.
Wheatley’s output consisted mostly of thrillers. His black magic books, on which his reputation today tests, were a small part of his output but they added something unique to popular fiction. They were occult thrillers rather than horror novels.
Wheatley was also partly responsible for the occult boom of the postwar years. When he wrote his first occult thriller in the mid-30s the occult subculture he described barely existed. By the 1970s, when his fame was at its peak, the occult was booming and a sizeable number of occult devotees were introduced to this world by Wheatley’s fiction.
The Devil is a Gentleman is an engaging portrait of a writer whose fame has been in eclipse since the 70 but whose reputation seems to be slowly reviving.
There are some authors whose works really do take on an added resonance when you know something of the author’s life and personality, and that’s definitely the case with Wheatley.
Wheatley’s black magic books always included the famous disclaimer at the front, assuring his readers that he had never personally participated in occult activities and earnestly warning of the dangers. An amazing number of people took this at face value, and combined with Wheatley’s reputation as a political reactionary a picture was formed of Wheately as a rather Colonel Blimp-ish figure. In fact Wheatley was far more sympathetic to the occult than his public image would have suggested and he was always hostile to Christianity.
Also at variance with his popular image was his flirtation with crime in the aftermath of the First World War. He became very friendly with a notorious confidence trickster named Tombe and if Wheatley was not directly involved in criminal activities he was certainly an accessory after the fact. Tombe was later murdered.
Wheatley’s background was solidly middle-class which undoubtedly explained his well-known snobbery. His snobbery seems to have been an amusing quirk rather than a truly offensive attitude and he comes cross as being essentially a kind and courteous man. His military service in the First World War was undistinguished but he was popular with the men under his command because he always treated them decently.
Baker doesn’t gloss over Wheatley’s faults but it’s clear that he regards him with quite a bit of affection. He also resists the temptation to be supercilious about Wheatley’s abilities a writer. Despite his shoddy prose style Wheatley knew how to construct a thriller and how to keep his reader’s interest and to his credit he never made the mistake of thinking of himself as anything other than a writer of popular fiction.
Wheatley’s output consisted mostly of thrillers. His black magic books, on which his reputation today tests, were a small part of his output but they added something unique to popular fiction. They were occult thrillers rather than horror novels.
Wheatley was also partly responsible for the occult boom of the postwar years. When he wrote his first occult thriller in the mid-30s the occult subculture he described barely existed. By the 1970s, when his fame was at its peak, the occult was booming and a sizeable number of occult devotees were introduced to this world by Wheatley’s fiction.
The Devil is a Gentleman is an engaging portrait of a writer whose fame has been in eclipse since the 70 but whose reputation seems to be slowly reviving.
January 2, 2013
A solid and competent biography of an icon of British popular literature.
Wheatley is, however, not as interesting a person as (say) Somerset Maugham whose biography by Selina Hastings we reviewed on GoodReads last year.
The net result is a readable account of a British 'type' - conservative, perhaps street-wise rather than highly intelligent, 'bon viveur', mostly likeable though not without mild sociopathic tendencies and, of course, slightly odd.
The one thing to be said is that a social snob like Wheatley is still infinitely preferable to the intellectual snob - Giles Gordon of Secker & Warburg on pages 544-546 may stand as the type of the last.
There are interesting tit-bits about sexual life in the first world war and twenties, about the first world war itself, about propaganda operations in the second and wealthy upper middle class lifestyles.
However, what we really want to read about is his occult literature (which gets its first treatment only after two fifths of the book has passed) but the book adds little to what we intuit.
The truth is that Wheatley was an energetic and creative man but no great writer. He simply hit on a formula that was able to latch on to the repressed fantasies, desires and fears of mid-century Britain.
The 'Devil Rides out' remains his masterpiece and possibly that of the Hammer Studio output. Wheatley's place in British cultural history is assured but none of that makes him great or good.
Still, Phil Baker writes in a clear and easy-going style and, with only very occasional confusions and minor repetitions in over 600 pages, the book is readable and useful.
Wheatley is, however, not as interesting a person as (say) Somerset Maugham whose biography by Selina Hastings we reviewed on GoodReads last year.
The net result is a readable account of a British 'type' - conservative, perhaps street-wise rather than highly intelligent, 'bon viveur', mostly likeable though not without mild sociopathic tendencies and, of course, slightly odd.
The one thing to be said is that a social snob like Wheatley is still infinitely preferable to the intellectual snob - Giles Gordon of Secker & Warburg on pages 544-546 may stand as the type of the last.
There are interesting tit-bits about sexual life in the first world war and twenties, about the first world war itself, about propaganda operations in the second and wealthy upper middle class lifestyles.
However, what we really want to read about is his occult literature (which gets its first treatment only after two fifths of the book has passed) but the book adds little to what we intuit.
The truth is that Wheatley was an energetic and creative man but no great writer. He simply hit on a formula that was able to latch on to the repressed fantasies, desires and fears of mid-century Britain.
The 'Devil Rides out' remains his masterpiece and possibly that of the Hammer Studio output. Wheatley's place in British cultural history is assured but none of that makes him great or good.
Still, Phil Baker writes in a clear and easy-going style and, with only very occasional confusions and minor repetitions in over 600 pages, the book is readable and useful.
May 18, 2021
The central problem with writing about someone like Wheatley is separating the public image from the private, especially given things like his WWII government work which sounds strange enough to be made up but is actually fact. Baker meticulously unpeels these two sides, showing how the public image developed. He also honestly but modestly points out flaws in Wheatley's fiction without treating him as a hack, which misses the mix of pulp and raconteur storytelling that makes Wheatley's work memorable.
February 5, 2020
This is a very funny book, gleefully finding humour in the archaic and, even by the standards of the time, skewed values of the subject. It is also extremely well-researched and informative. Wheatley was definitely an old duffer, but he progressed as a human being as he aged from somewhat of a cad to a more humble and self-aware person, who seems quite sweet in his dotage. Highly recommended: I think this is now my favourite biography of a literary figure, beating even Crick's book on George Orwell
May 22, 2018
An entertaining and drily witty biography of a writer of whom, to my surprise, not one of my friends seems to have heard.
August 1, 2022
4.5 stars. This biography of Dennis Wheatley is thorough and very detailed. As always, Phil Baker is a humourous writer and remarkable researcher, which makes this the definitive Wheatley biography, and very engaging to read. I can always recommend Baker as a biographer and historian.
The one thing that detracted from it, for me, was that a disproportionate section of this (very hefty) book was dedicated to the story of Eric Gordon Tombe. Though the story was very interesting - and Tombe did have an influence on Wheatley - it felt to my mind like Tombe's biography was shoehorned into Wheatley's. Other readers may not mind this, as he was an unusual and interesting character.
The one thing that detracted from it, for me, was that a disproportionate section of this (very hefty) book was dedicated to the story of Eric Gordon Tombe. Though the story was very interesting - and Tombe did have an influence on Wheatley - it felt to my mind like Tombe's biography was shoehorned into Wheatley's. Other readers may not mind this, as he was an unusual and interesting character.
September 17, 2013
This is a compelling biography, meticulously researched, expertly written and a must-read for any Dennis Wheatley fans, closeted or not. (Or anyone simply interested in London high society through the first half of the 20th century.) We meet a succession of exotic characters, from Aleister Crowley to the original model for M in James Bond. It's fascinating. And repellent as Wheatley can be at times in his anachronistic world view, you can't help but warm to him, as the author clearly has. Highly recommended, and as a result of this, I shall be picking up the author's biography of Austin Osman Spare in the near future.
November 18, 2010
The facts are interesting, as is Wheatley's life and writing, but this book was spoiled to a large degree by the obvious dislike of the author for its subject matter. That Wheatley was not a great writer of literature has never been denied, least of all by Wheatley himself, but to constantly refer to this time and again and to continually use snide phrasing when talking about his character just got irritating. I would have preferred a biography that was unbiased either for or against. This was very much angled against. Saved by the subject matter, not by the writing.
August 16, 2015
Well-researched and throughout, and also quite entertaining to read!
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