Bright Young Things discussion

Ok not a favourite - but, I am beginning to realise, an interesting character even if his fiction may have its limitations..


Ivan wrote: "I have thousands of books and nothing to read. It's a terrible state of affairs. I want to be reading The Devil Rides Out. Why? I don't know; I never know why I want to read what I want to read."

Funnily enough the film version was on again recently. I was tempted to record it having been a big Dennis Wheatley fan - both books and film adaptations - as a teenager. Sex, satanism etc. - it's a teenage boy's dream come true.

Dennis Wheatley came up in Haw-Haw: The Tragedy of William and Margaret Joyce by Nigel Farndale and that got me thinking about him again.

Has anyone read...



The Devil Is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley by Phil Baker

It sounds great...

"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 He spent most of the War attending training camps and hunting for casual sex (and writing his first, unpublished, novel), before being sent to the Western Front in 1917.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.

Few people are aware that Dennis Wheatley, in his day one of the biggest selling novelists in the world, spent the Second World War as a member of Winston Churchill's Joint Planning Staff. Wheatley's job was to confuse the enemy by writing 'plausible, official documents' and to feed them to the Nazis. Here is that little known and intriguing story, drawn on previously unpublished restricted papers - and with a foreword by one of today's best-selling authors.

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

This is a great intro...


http://www.denniswheatley.info/dennis...

Dennis Wheatley was born in London in January 1897, the son and grandson of Mayfair wine merchants. From 1908 - 1912 he was a cadet on HMS Worcester, then spent a year in Germany learning about wine making. In September 1914, at the age of seventeen, he received his commission and later fought at Cambrai, St. Quentin and Passchendaele.

Gassed, he was subsequently invalided from the army and entered the family wine business, and following the death of his father in 1926, became its sole owner. During this period he began to write short stories, a number of which were later published or expanded into full-length novels. Following the failure of his first marriage, in 1931 he married Joan Younger.

Wheatley's business was badly affected by the slump of the early thirties and by 1932 he was forced to sell up and came close to bankruptcy. As a diversion from his financial worries and with the encouragement of his wife, Wheatley set about writing a full-length murder mystery that he called ‘Three Inquisitive People’. His agent's reader considered the book to be weak, commenting:

“This story shows considerable promise but does not conform to the accepted formula for murder stories. We do not see enough of the murderer, and the construction is poor in that the heroine is not brought in early enough and plays no essential part, and that after the point at which the book should normally be concluded there is a long epilogue tacked on which is unduly loaded with bathos.”

However, this book introduced the characters of the Duc de Richleau and his friends who were to become Wheatley's most popular inventions. Whilst ‘Three Inquisitive People’ was in the hands of his agent he set about writing a second book featuring the same characters, ‘The Forbidden Territory’, which was immediately snapped up by Hutchinson. This adventure story won immediate acclaim from both the press and public alike. It was reprinted seven times in as many weeks, was translated into many languages and the film rights were bought by Alfred Hitchcock.

This book was followed by a string of thrillers that, throughout the 1930s, propelled Wheatley into the category of best selling author. As an avid reader himself, and fanatical collector of modern first editions, he was familiar with the work of authors such as H. Rider Haggard, Conan Doyle, William Hope Hodgson, John Buchan and his particular favourite Alexandre Dumas, and was influenced in varying degrees by each. His work in the thirties seemed to be perfectly in tune with the spirit of the age, enforcing the virtues of imperialism in which he totally believed, and countering the rising threat of communism.

In 1939 he became the editor of the ‘Personality Pages’ of the Sunday Graphic and a volunteer speaker on behalf of the war effort. In the early days of the war, despite his best efforts, Wheatley was unable to find suitable war-work and so continued to write his novels, being one of the first writers to use the real life events of the day as the backdrop to his stories.

Then in May 1940, following a chance conversation between his wife and her passenger while she was a driver for MI5, Wheatley was commissioned to write a series of papers on various strategic aspects of the War. These ‘War Papers’ were read by the King and the highest levels of the General Staff, and as a result in December 1941 he was re-commissioned, becoming the only civilian to be directly recruited onto the Joint Planning Staff. With the final rank of Wing Commander, for the rest of the War Wheatley worked in Churchill's basement fortress as one of the country’s small handful of ‘Deception Planners’ who were charged with developing ways to deceive the enemy of the Allies real strategic intentions. Their top secret operations, which included the plans to deceive the enemy about the true site of the Normandy landings, were highly successful and saved countless lives.

After the war he moved to Grove Place in Lymington and continued his writing. Throughout most of his career, Wheatley produced two novels a year although this later dropped to one, usually having a summer release.

As well as producing adventure stories, Wheatley also turned his hand to biography producing two in the 1930s, ‘Old Rowley’ (1933) and ‘Red Eagle’ (1937). The four crime dossiers he produced with Joe Links in the 30s were an enjoyable and profitable diversion for him. Reproduced as ‘facsimiles’ in the late 1970s, the originals should be sought out by collectors as many of the physical clues are reduced to photographs in the reprints.

With the popularity of paperback editions of his works, his sales rocketed. In the UK alone he sold over 1,000,000 copies of his books a year during the 1960s. Also in the 1960s, two of his most popular titles, ‘The Devil Rides Out’ and ‘Uncharted Seas’ (renamed ‘The Lost Continent’) were filmed by Hammer and negotiations took place to turn some of his books into a TV series.

By the 1970s Wheatley completed the series of Roger Brook novels and set about writing his projected five-volume autobiography. This was later reduced to four volumes with two of them being much condensed.

He died of liver failure on 10 November 1977 at the age of eighty leaving behind him a massive body of work. He was cremated at Putney Vale and his ashes were buried at Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey, under a tree near the entrance.

For a more comprehensive account of Dennis Wheatley's life, read Phil Baker's definitive biography The Devil Is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley

Nigeyb wrote: "Has anyone read...



The Devil Is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley by Phil Baker"

I've got a copy now so will let you know - I suspect his life would make a great topic for a BYT non-fiction discussion

#probablyjustmethough

Niegyb - this fellow would be great to coordinate his biography with one of his works of fiction for a September reading group ! I would love to do something like that and then wrap it up with a film if we could find one ! That would be really cool !

Dawn

^ Sounds good to me - thanks Dawn

Earlier today I was gratified to read a four star review of The Devil Rides Out from our very own CQM, which made me feel that this thread was not so fanciful after all.

CQM, as we all know, has impeccable taste.

As CQM observes: "Thrills aplenty if you can quiet that part of your mind that pipes up with comments such as "what a lot of nonsense" or "tosh, utter tosh!". And for my part I've never had any trouble quieting my mind!"


Click here to read CQM’s review of The Devil Rides Out