Donald McCormick – The Hellfire Club

Donald McCormick – The Hellfire Club (Pedigree, nd: originally Jarrold, 1958)

Blurb
When John Wilkes was prosecuted for the obscene libel of his Essay on Women in 1763, the repercussions of this case produced one of the biggest political scandals of all time.
A shocked public learned that its Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer and other Cabinet Ministers had for years been masquerading in the semi-ruined Abbey of Medmenham on the banks of the Thames. Not only had they dressed up as “monks” and indulged in mysterious rites, but they had admitted to their strange society masked and hooded women, whom they were pleased to call “nuns”.
When the secret of Medmenham became known, this rakes’ club transferred its headquarters to caves cut deep into the heart of West Wycombe Hill. Thus posterity has come to know the originally styled “Knights of Saint Francis of Wycombe” as the “Hell-Fire Club”.
This book makes a fascinating study of an age when rakemanship was a fine art. By judicious selection of much original material, including extracts from the club’s wine books, from faded letters and diaries of con­temporary figures, the author has succeeded in building up a factual, well-documented picture of these scandalous “monks” and their lively “nuns”.
“Read this fascinating book for a close-up of the rakes who once ruled Britain.”— Daily Mirror.
This is an original PEDIGREE BOOKS reprint, complete and unabridged, of a book hitherto available only in full cloth-bound form and priced at 18s. net.
For the BEST in modern reading choose — PEDIGREE BOOKS

James Holledge – Sex And The Sun King

James Holledge – Sex And The Sun King (Horwitz, 1964)

Blurb
“Her beauty is marvellous. Her costume is as wonderful as her beauty, and her gaiety as her costume.”
In this manner a contemporary described the notorious Athenais de Montespan, mis­tress of Louis XVI who had vowed “to show France how a King’s mistress should really uphold her station.”
It was also said that “thunderous and triumphant she entered upon her empire as one to the manner born, a tyrant over Louis and thus over the land and people he thought to rule by right divine,”
To hold her position against rivals de Montespan used not only feminine wiles, but the cruel, disgusting magic of the Black Mass.

Phil Baker – The Devil is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley

Phil Baker – The Devil is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley (Dedalus, October 31st, 2009)

Cover design: Jonathan Barker

Blurb
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.

Like Sax Rohmer and John Buchan, Wheatley has now moved from being perceived as dated to positively vintage, and this groundbreaking biography offers a major reassessment of his significance and status.

for more info click on the cute little Dedalus logo;

Fortean Times #256 (Dec. 2009): Wheatley!

David Stton (ed.) – Fortean Times #256 (Dec. 2009)

Yep, something of a mini-Wheatley special! Even the editorial by David Sutton et al is mainly devoted to “Britain’s Occult Uncle”’s scary A Letter To Posterity. Best of all, lead feature, Dennis And All His Works is by Phil Baker himself and serves as an intriguing taster for the biography as the five pages of text concern themselves with the interesting stuff, namely the Black Magic novels and Wheatley’s commendable WWII exploits as a deception planner and propagandist. Mr. Baker suggests that Wheatley wasn’t quite the expert on black sorcery he made himself out to be (i gather he’s far more explicit in the biog), but most modern Occultists, however loathe they are to admit it, probably got into the game via a dogeared copy of The Devil Rides Out. In passing, Mr. Baker also detects the Wheatley influence on June Johns’ Black Magic Today and Sandra Shulman’s The Degenerates, both “published by iconic paperback imprint New English Library which also published Richard Allen’s Skinhead books.” Considering the little space at his disposal, Mr. Baker works in plenty of tantalising snippets including the true identity of ‘Conky Bill, and the revelation that Wheatley & chums perpetrated a ‘Linda Lovecraft’ style scam in the Daily Mail when they introduced glamourous socialite Ermintrude Wraxwell to the gossip column (“next day, offers started coming in from agents and film companies. Had we named a real girl, we could have made a fortune from her.”). Even the flame girl covers get a paragraph! Also, from nowhere, Curtain Of Fear and Such Power Is Dangerous have abseiled to near the top of my wants list although, admittedly, perhaps not for the reasons DW would’ve wished.

Somebody up there likes us because as an added bonus, there’s another six pager, this one by Stewart T. Stanyard, celebrating fiftieth anniversary of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone.