Overview

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 Drawing on a wealth of unpublished material, Phil Baker examines Wheatley's key friendship with a fraudster named Eric Gordon Tombe, and uncovers the full story of his sensational 1922 murder.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.

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9781907650321

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Reviews

Baker's exhaustively researched biography is a terrific read. -- Luke Jennings in The Observer

'Phil Baker's superb biography, The Devil is a Gentleman, fills in the details and catches Wheatley's breathless appeal.' Christopher Fowler in The Independent

Author Information

Phil Baker has written two books for Dedalus: The Dedalus Book of Absinthe and The Devil is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley. He has also edited and wrote the introduction for Dedalus of The Man Who Was Norris: The Life of Gerald Hamilton. He reviews for a number of papers including The Sunday Times and The Times Literary Supplement. He is the author of a book on Samuel Beckett and biographies of the London artist Austin Osman Spare and the American writer William S. Burroughs. Phil Baker lives in central London.

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