‘For my generation of Essex teenagers, Dennis Wheatley’s novels represented the essential primer in diabolism,’ Ronald Hutton, the historian and expert on paganism, recalls.
‘For my generation of Essex teenagers, Dennis Wheatley’s novels represented the essential primer in diabolism,’ Ronald Hutton, the historian and expert on paganism, recalls. It wasn’t peculiar to Essex. In the Sixties, reading Dennis Wheatley was something one did to prove one’s daring — and to get the atmosphere right for spooky parties. We may not have realised that they were seriously dated; that they represented a British tradition of gentlemanly adventure (which Colin Watson neatly dubbed ‘snobbery with violence’); or that we were engaged in having our cake and eating it too — for the books contained enough suggested sex and actual violence to satisfy the depraved attitude of 16, while ensuring that right triumphed in the end.
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