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Review
The Devil is a Gentleman ... is a brilliantly illuminating biography. --Michael Gove in The Times
I enjoyed this biography. It may not, in the reviewer's cliché, send me rushing back to Wheatley's novels. But I came away with an enhanced understanding of a complex and sociable man whose work epitomised some of the more lurid aspects of British popular taste. --Andrew Lycett in The Literary Review
The arguments and information in the text are excellent, so that a consistent and well-rounded personality is constructed for Wheatley and the sources of his ideas and images carefully traced --Ronald Hutton in The Times Literary Supplement
I enjoyed this biography. It may not, in the reviewer's cliché, send me rushing back to Wheatley's novels. But I came away with an enhanced understanding of a complex and sociable man whose work epitomised some of the more lurid aspects of British popular taste. --Andrew Lycett in The Literary Review
The arguments and information in the text are excellent, so that a consistent and well-rounded personality is constructed for Wheatley and the sources of his ideas and images carefully traced --Ronald Hutton in The Times Literary Supplement
Product Description
Definitive biography of the life and times of Dennis Wheatley
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Dennis Wheatley led a fascinating life, both as a writer and a war planner, and it's high time a decent biography of him was published. This is it. Despite Wheatley having written several volumes of revealing memoir, this book is a must for anyone interested in his life. Wheatley was often vague on dates, especially for the latter part of his life, and was not the person to put his own life into meaningful context. Phil Baker's biography is a great read, but is also invaluable as a reference tool, as it is meticulously researched and sourced, and uncovers all sorts of intriguing connections in the literary, cinematic and military fields. At this length, it's perhaps not a book to take to the beach and read in one sitting: it is more of a rich meal to savour over time. The writing is lively and often laconic - Baker is as attuned to literary establishment snobbery as he is to Wheatley's own pretensions - but it is his hard work in reference libraries and newspaper archives that has really paid off, and which makes this the definitive Wheatley biography.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
As a lifelong enthusiast of supernatural and occult fiction I've tried at various times to enjoy Dennis Wheatley's books, with little success. But I know enough about the history of magic to recognise the crucial role that Wheatley played in shaping the occult imagination of the 20th century, and so, somewhat daunted by its 700-page girth, I began reading Phil Baker's biography of the man who put smoking jackets on Satanists and made black magic seem like a wise career choice for many a dreaming teen.
I needn't have worried - this is one of the most entertaining books I've read in years and also one of the most lucidly fascinating and effortlessly informative. In a tone that is alternately warm and wry, sympathetic and scandalous, Baker transports us into a bygone world of genteel bigotry, social climbing, institutionalised xenophobia and the fear of the devil himself. Wheatley himself is portrayed as an engaging product of pre-war Britain, one who sought in his fiction to reflect the world as he thought it ought to be, but found that world slipping away from him even faster than he could knock out novels.
But Baker's book is about more than just Wheatley himself. We learn a great deal about the man and his times through the other characters he comes into contact with - prominent among them his mentor, the Niven-esque underworld chancer Eric Tombe, and a supporting cast of upper class fascists, eccentrics and occultists - some of them, like MI5 founder Maxwell Knight and Tank Pioneer Captain John Fuller, all three at once.
I was genuinely sad to see Wheatley go at this wonderful book's end and, as a measure of the biography's success, I was so flushed with enthusiasm for Dennis and all his works, that I immediately bought a copy of The Devil Rides Out and began reading it. I gave up after 30 pages.
I needn't have worried - this is one of the most entertaining books I've read in years and also one of the most lucidly fascinating and effortlessly informative. In a tone that is alternately warm and wry, sympathetic and scandalous, Baker transports us into a bygone world of genteel bigotry, social climbing, institutionalised xenophobia and the fear of the devil himself. Wheatley himself is portrayed as an engaging product of pre-war Britain, one who sought in his fiction to reflect the world as he thought it ought to be, but found that world slipping away from him even faster than he could knock out novels.
But Baker's book is about more than just Wheatley himself. We learn a great deal about the man and his times through the other characters he comes into contact with - prominent among them his mentor, the Niven-esque underworld chancer Eric Tombe, and a supporting cast of upper class fascists, eccentrics and occultists - some of them, like MI5 founder Maxwell Knight and Tank Pioneer Captain John Fuller, all three at once.
I was genuinely sad to see Wheatley go at this wonderful book's end and, as a measure of the biography's success, I was so flushed with enthusiasm for Dennis and all his works, that I immediately bought a copy of The Devil Rides Out and began reading it. I gave up after 30 pages.
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This biography has surprises as strange and as unexpected as anything in Wheatley's own novels. Meticulously researched, Baker never stifles his material by presenting it as dreary facts, but vividly and deftly creates an entirely credible portrait of Wheatley in the round, with an enviable lightness of style.
A book worthy of its subject, and likely to be one of the biographies of the year.
A book worthy of its subject, and likely to be one of the biographies of the year.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
The Devil is a tory
Much better than I imagined a biography of Wheatley could be.Very detailed and illuminating about the right wing politics of the day.Probably a much better job than he deserved. Read more
Published 7 months ago by bucky
The definitive Wheatley biography
This massive book is clearly the product of extensive original research. The author is right that Wheatley had talent, but that he squandered it through concentrating on quantity... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Nigel Barnett
very comprehensive and readable biography of this legendary author
A very well written and well researched book - very readable - a few more photographs of related subject material i. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Rob
A dull book about a fascinating author
This book is not an interesting read about Wheatley. The focus seems to be about Wheatley's fascination with the occult and his dislike of socialism. Read more
Published 19 months ago by L. S. Sinclair
A disappointment
This book is disappointing because Baker seems to have been unable to leave out any of the material he amassed. Read more
Published 24 months ago by James A. Hicken
Superb, Monumental Biography of Dennis Wheatley
This monumental biography, clearly the fruit of extensive research, provides a much needed resource regarding the career and life of the novelist Dennis Wheatley: it is in fact a... Read more
Published on 29 May 2010 by Nigel C. Jackson
A life more fascinating than the work
Dennis Wheatly was not a great writer, perhaps not even a good one and Phil Baker, while giving full credit to his story-telling abilities, is by no means blind to the absurd... Read more
Published on 5 Mar 2010 by Reggie Oliver
Brit Zeitgeist, but no Lovecraft.
This is not an academic Literary survey but an overview of an individual who had a suprising impact on British popular culture, and indeed the ideas to which he pandered and... Read more
Published on 30 Dec 2009 by XIII Warrior
poor effort
for all their faults i am a fan of wheatleys books and looked forward to this book for months. alas it focuses to much on wheatleys occult novels which make up less than 20% of the... Read more
Published on 9 Nov 2009 by Kenneth Gallacher
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