This pretty much accorded with Dennis Wheatley’s own beliefs, although he was not born in these favoured circles. Dennis Wheatley’s father was a wine merchant, who sold fine wines to the aristocracy and royalty of Europe. Dennis Wheatley was commissioned as an officer in the First World War, which gave him an advantage socially. When the family business ran into trouble, Dennis Wheatley had the brilliant idea of grafting a literature of the occult on to a thriller. He then hit a winner in 1934 with The Devil Rides Out. At this time, between two World Wars, crime fiction throughout Europe was enormously popular, with the equally conservative-minded and privileged Agatha Christie as its Queen of Crime.

Fifty-two of Wheatley's novels were published posthumously in a set by Heron Books UK. More recently, in April 2008 Dennis Wheatley's literary estate was acquired by media company Chorion. We also get monsters, spirits, and magic, but they are never overused. Wheatley always shows us just enough to give us something cool without it becoming boring from being done to death.Those who have criticised the Hammer film’s finale as being somewhat anticlimactic might have to be careful what they wish for when reading the novel. Instead of rescuing Peggy/Fleur from the occultists’ house which Rex discovered earlier in the film, our heroes head straight from Cardinal’s Folly (the Eaton’s Kidderminster home) to France in Richard’s private plane, and from there they follow a lead to Greece, which involves a twelve-hundred-mile journey across the alps to Yanina, after which ‘we’ll have to use horses’! Given the title of this novel, and the fact that the antagonists in the plot are Satanists, it seems incongruous that Wheatley puts into the Duke's mouth the claim, "There is no such person as the devil..." (Chapter 7). But that makes sense given the worldview he's taking here as his premise. Satan, of course, is a creature of God, a fallen angel who's rebelled against his Maker; he's not God's co-eternal and co-equal opponent. But Wheatley is consciously basing his picture of reality here, as laid out in great detail in Chapter 3, on the schema of Zoroastrian dualism (which he explicitly refers to there) with its co-eternal and co-equal powers of Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, perpetually warring for control of the universe and mankind. (With some writers of supernatural fiction, this would simply be a literary conceit, but Wheatley apparently actually believed in something like this.) All of his research --which was quite considerable-- into occultism and primitive/ancient religion is interpreted in that light, and all religions (including Christianity) are re-interpreted and homogenized into harmonious expressions of that idea. The goal of all "true" religions of "the Right Hand Path," supposedly (as he also states explicitly) is progress towards "perfection" through successive reincarnations. Not surprisingly, to paint this picture (through the Duke's lectures at various places in the book, which can have an info-dumpy quality), he misinterprets and garbles factual and historical material in significant ways, sometimes makes outright factual errors, and at times makes use of spurious or intellectually discredited sources. I did a lot of eye-rolling during this read, in quite a few places. He also treats astrology, palmistry (in which another character is conveniently but improbably well-versed) and numerology as legitimate sciences to be taken seriously --which I don't. To me, the rather long numerology lesson was particularly eye-glazing. In the film, the Duke is given the Christian name ‘Nicholas’ whereas, in Wheatley’s novels, his full name was ‘Jean Armand Duplessis’ before he inherited the tile of Duke de Richleau. Heaven and Hell are only symbolical of growth to Light or disintegration to Darkness,” de Richleau explains. “There is no such person as the Devil, but there are vast numbers of Earthbound spirits, Elementals, and Evil Intelligences of the Outer Circle floating in our midst. But anyone who accepts Satanic baptism does exactly the reverse. They willfully destroy the barrier of astral Light which is our natural protection and offer themselves as a medium through which the powers of Darkness may operate on mankind.”

This was the first time I came across a book by Dennis Wheatley & I am glad to say i was not disappointed. A group of very self-righteous, incredibly rich people swan around in a desperate race against time to stop some Satanists doing - well, it's never entirely clear what - while taking frequent breaks to sample the finer things in life, lecture each other condescendingly, patronise women and complain about the bourgeois, poor, socialists... Maybe those pesky Satanists intended to vote for Jeremy Corbyn? The hysterical tone of the ultra-privileged heroes comes straight out of Tory central casting. Oh, did I mention the racism? This is a very racist book. I know this is a book from the 30s, but I'm genuinely surprised Wheatley was on our side during the war. Quite a few lines in here suggest at least a passing regard for the Nazis. He probably just didn't feel they were from good enough families. James Hilton, reviewing The Devil Rides Out, described it as "The best thing of its kind since Dracula". [2]

With increasing tension, we perceive the ensuing chaos, no longer directed at just a few; not random acts of rape and carnage, cannibalism, mutilation of babies and so on, but now applied on a massive scale across all humanity and time. Nature now no longer a neutral force, but twisted to an evil purpose. The duke uses some interesting analogies to explain magic to Rex, Richard, and Marie Lou. And they are good points. DUKE: Yes, take any of them. So says the duke, moments after informing us that the curator of the British Museum is a good friend of his These negotiations went on from 1963 until 1967 because, even though Stainer-Hutchins was willing to sell his interest, he wanted to work on the special effects. The problem with that, according to Carreras, was that they wanted more money than the budget allowed and weren’t particularly very good.