1. Dennis Yates Wheatley was a British writer whose prolific output of thrillers and occult novels made him one of the world's best-selling authors from the 1930s through to the 1960s.
22 Facts About Dennis Wheatley
1. 2.
Dennis Wheatley admitted to having little aptitude for schooling and was later expelled after a few "unhappy years" studying at Dulwich College for allegedly forming a "secret society", as he mentions in his introduction to The Devil Rides Out.
3.
Dennis Wheatley was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant into the Royal Field Artillery during the First World War, receiving his basic training at Biscot Camp in Luton.
4.
Dennis Wheatley was assigned to the City of London Brigade and the 36th Division.
5.
Dennis Wheatley was gassed in a chlorine attack during Passchendaele and was invalided out, having served in Flanders, on the Ypres Salient, and in France at Cambrai and Saint-Quentin.
6.
Dennis Wheatley wrote numerous papers for them, including suggestions for dealing with a possible Nazi invasion of Britain.
7.
Dennis Wheatley received a direct commission in the JP Service as a Wing Commander, RAFVR, and took part in the plans for the Normandy invasions.
8.
Dennis Wheatley introduced me to Aleister Crowley, the Reverend Montague Summers and Rollo Ahmed.
9.
Dennis Wheatley mainly wrote adventure novels, with many books in a series of linked works.
10.
Dennis Wheatley came to be considered an authority on Satanism, the practice of exorcism, and black magic, toward all of which he expressed hostility.
11.
In many of his works, Dennis Wheatley wove in interactions between his characters and actual historical events and individuals.
12.
Dennis Wheatley devised a number of board games including Invasion, Blockade, and Alibi.
13.
Dennis Wheatley wrote non-fiction works, including an account of the Russian Revolution, a life of King Charles II of England, and several autobiographical volumes.
14.
Dennis Wheatley edited several collections of short stories, and from 1974 to 1977 he supervised a series of 45 paperback reprints for the British publisher Sphere with the heading "The Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult", selecting the titles and writing short introductions for each book.
15.
Two weeks before his death in November 1977, Dennis Wheatley received conditional absolution from his old friend Cyril 'Bobby' Eastaugh, the Bishop of Peterborough.
16.
Dennis Wheatley was cremated at Tooting and his ashes interred at the South Cemetery section of Brookwood Cemetery, under a tall tree near the entrance.
17.
Dennis Wheatley's protagonists are generally supporters of the monarchy, the British Empire and the class system, and many of his villains are villainous because they attack these ideas.
18.
Dennis Wheatley was an opponent of Nazism and Communism, believing them to be controlled by Satanic power.
19.
Dennis Wheatley predicted in it that the socialist reforms, which were introduced by the post-war government, would result inevitably in the abolition of the monarchy, the "pampering" of a "lazy" working class and a national bankruptcy.
20.
From 1972 to 1977,52 of Dennis Wheatley's novels were offered in a uniform hardcover set by Heron Books UK.
21.
However, many of them will have new introductions evaluating Dennis Wheatley's work, including some written by his grandson, Dominic Dennis Wheatley.
22.
In Stephen Volk's novella Netherwood, part of Volk's 2018 book The Dark Masters Trilogy, set in 1947, a fictional version of Dennis Wheatley is involved in black magic by Aleister Crowley.