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The Devil Is a Gentleman by Phil Baker | Book review

Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Nov 08, 2009

Summary

Luke Jennings succumbs to Dennis Wheatley's devilish charms

In 1966, a young editor named Giles Gordon joined Hutchinson and was handed the latest Dennis Wheatley manuscript. Some streak of devilry made Gordon remove the title page and send it to the publishing house's most intolerant reader. "The book is terribly hackneyed," came the reply, to Gordon's delight. "Above all, [the author] cannot write. Regretfully decline."

At the time, Wheatley had 55 titles in print, he had sold more than 20 million books and, as Phil Baker, makes clear, he was not writing for the liberal likes of Gordon, whose objections were briskly overruled, but for a more traditionally minded readership. Wheatley's style and values are laid out in the opening pages of his bestselling work The Devil Rides Out, first published in 1934. The central character is the Duc de Richleau, whom we discover in the library of his West End flat, dressed in "a claret-coloured vicuna smoking suit", drinking "wonderful old brandy" and smoking one of the long Hoyos de Monterrey that were "his especial pride

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