1959 was a milestone for Wheatley. He had been an author for twenty-five years, and now he modified his image by publishing some of his wartime papers as Stranger Than Fiction. This launched Wheatley the war planner, maverick thinker, and senior backroom boy.
The party for Stranger Than Fiction doubled as a celebration of Wheatley’s quarter century of authorship, and it was held at the wine merchants Justerini and Brooks. Justerini’s had moved from Pall Mall to 153 New Bond Street, with new decor themed around the Regency.
Thursday 29th January was an exceptionally bad night of old-style “pea-souper” fog in London, with low visibility, traffic halted, breathing trouble, and red-rimmed eyes. Guests had to battle their way to New Bond Street. Along with the Press, there were around sixty friends and comrades, mostly with their wives, including, Dudley Clark, Peter Fleming, General Sir Colin Gubbins, Colonel Sir Ronald Wingate, Maxwell Knight, Sherry Sheridan, the Marquis of Donegal, the Duchess of Westminster, several lords, a Russian prince or two, J.G. Links, Bino Johnstone, and several Air Marshals and Air Chief Marshals. Lord Mountbatten telephoned his apologies at the last moment, while Air Marshal Sir Laurence Darvall flew back from Washington. Bobby Eastaugh turned up in full ecclesiastical purple (“stranger than fiction just about suits it”, he said to Wheatley) because as Bishop of Kensington he had to go on to the St.Paul’s Cathedral Dinner.
Inside the party – in “the mahogany twilight of one of those green-glass and deep-carpet wine merchants in Bond St” – the air smelled of Patou’s Moment Supreme. Wheatley, just turned 62, tubby and red-faced, was wearing an unflattering double-breasted suit of somewhat gangsterish effect and handing round treble whiskies. He was in his element presiding over the raffle, at which the Duchess of Westminster drew the lucky numbers and presented the prizes, chiefly drink and books.
Wheatley was having fun, after a fashion, but it was hard work. His conversation with journalists generally consisted of a bonhomous gallop through his curriculum vitae. He circulated the room, spending “ten seconds or so having a lightning conversation with each of the small groups of friends.” It was then time for him to be whisked off for a television appearance. Wheatley mislaid his glasses and insisted that he had left them in Television House, which was searched thoroughly before they turned up in his bedroom. “I felt a bit foolish”, he said. But it had been a good party, and he had done well. “Thank you for the party,” wrote Eddie Tatham in reply to Wheatley’s prompt letter of thanks.
Wheatley had meanwhile finished another book, The Rape of Venice, and with that and the party out of the way, he and Joan flew out for four weeks on the Italian Riviera.
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Wheatley had to give a number of interviews about Stranger Than Fiction, which generally took his success and comfortable lifestyle as their starting point. Wheatley was the “£10,000 a year thriller writer”, the man with 37 books translated into 23 languages, and total sales of around 14 million. They were still selling at the rate of half a million books a year, and all thirty seven were still in print.
Wheatley was genial and hospitable (“first let me fill up your glass, and I’ll tell you about it”) but he was also somewhat self-regarding and self-mythologising: war planning, he said, was “an ideal job for a man steeped in espionage” [my emphasis]. More than that, “I was gassed in the first world war. As a result, I couldn’t play games. I had time to study international politics instead. Rather funny, that. The Germans gassed me – and gave me time to learn how to beat them in war.”
As far as gassing went, Wheatley had got off very lightly compared to many, if he was gassed at all. He didn’t play games anyway. He had always been a voracious reader. And his immersion in Alexander Dumas and Baroness Orczy perhaps played a less decisive role in bringing the Reich to its knees than he manages to imply.
Pre-war journalism had a jauntier style and it was heavily oriented towards twists and novelties in its headlines; by modern tastes, it tries too hard. Even the Stranger Than Fiction coverage produced lines such as “The arch-intriguer of the lending libraries was put to plotting actual dare-devilry,” and “In the midst of war, PEACE was his aim.” It was probably his experience of pre-war papers that led Wheatley to feed journalists neat lines and little twists (“rather funny that”) suited to old-style journalism of the ‘No Games for Wheatley Meant No Fun For Hitler!’ variety.
The reviews of Stranger Than Fiction were exceptionally mixed. Depending which paper you picked up, it was either an absolutely fascinating book about a valuable contribution to the War, or it was a pointless waste of time and an embarrassment to all concerned.
Wheatley’s Sardinia plan provoked discussion, for and against. Wheatley did what he could to air it in interviews, and tried to gain publicity for it with potential reviewers (“Thank you for the autographed copy …” wrote one of them, “I certainly hope that I will be able to write about the question of the Sardinian landing”). A number of commentators were convinced by Wheatley’s plan and thought the Allies could have avoided the slog up the coast of Italy, arriving in Germany far ahead of the Russians and changing the course of history.
Wheatley kept all his reviews together – good, bad, and indifferent – and put them carefully in an album, together with letters about the party.
One review riled him, and this was a piece by Ewen Montagu in the Jewish Chronicle. Montagu, who had been awarded an OBE and a CBE, had already annoyed Wheatley with his 1953 book about deception planning, The Man Who Never Was. Noting in passing that Wheatley’s papers were of inordinate length and detail, he then turned to Sardinia.
The wildness of Mr Wheatley’s ideas can be indicated by mentioning that his pet strategic plan, to which he returns again and again, was that we should invade and occupy Sardinia in 1940! The reader who remembers what it cost us to supply and maintain Malta can gain an idea of Mr Wheatley’s strategic thinking even without knowledge of our lack of suitable material at the time.
Montagu also raised an eyebrow at Wheatley’s idea of Jewish regiments, funded by “World Jewry”, with a homeland promised in some unspecified place other than Palestine. He then ridiculed several other ideas (fortunately not adopted, or “those of us who survived would now be speaking German”) before concluding “Mr Wheatley’s many fans will indeed be sorry that he has seen fit to publish these papers.”
Wheatley made a typewritten note and put it in his album with Montagu’s review:
Montagu was only a Lt.Cdr.RNVR (Intelligence). He could not conceal his bitter jealousy of us in the War Cabinet. We laughed and nicknamed him “Highland Laddie”. In his eagerness to take a crack at me he has even ignored convention by reviewing “S than F” 10 days before the date of publication; yet I would have thought him more intelligent than to compare Sardinia with Malta – poor Ewan!
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Wheatley’s new reputation as a lateral thinker and talented non-specialist inspired a friend to write to him about the subject of noise. Inventor Peter Kooch de Gooreynd wrote to say that he had been talking to a mutual friend about his latest idea which concerned the elimination of noise. Leslie Hollis remembered Wheatley’s plan for droning bomber noises to spoil the German night. Kooch de Gooreynd’s object was the reverse, but he nevertheless hoped Wheatley might have some ideas.
Another unexpected commission came from the managing director of Nu-Swift, the fire extinguisher manufacturers. Mr Graucob had read Wheatley’s book and been so impressed that he wrote to Wheatley in March 1959 with a business proposition. He wanted Wheatley to look over his factory and his sales organisation in the hope that he could suggest improvements.
Wheatley’s first concern was tax. Graucob offered Wheatley a generous four hundred guinea fee (about six thousand pounds) and Wheatley was immediately alert to the possibility of being paid in cruise tickets or similar.
In due course Wheatley produced a careful document, divided into numbered and lettered subsections. From “2. The Object of the Operation” (“To increase the sales of Nu-Swift Fire Extinguishers”) Wheatley proceeded to consider “3. Factors in favour of the achievement of the Object” (a-d) and “4. Factors against the achievement of the Object” (a-c). And so it went on, for fifteen detailed pages.
Unfortunately, once in receipt of the Report, Graucob had to break it gently to Wheatley that it wasn’t altogether useful. Part of the problem was the two men’s different outlook. Graucob knew he had an excellent product, but he also knew that the majority of fires occur in the homes of the elderly and the poor, and that these are precisely the groups who tend not to have fire extinguishers. This was the kind of problem he wanted to address.
Wheatley’s approach was instead based on prestige, and targeting the fears of special interest groups. He advised Graucob to get his extinguishers fitted in Rolls-Royce cars, then use the fact in his advertising, and he further suggested targeting yachtsmen, private schools, and stamp collectors, the latter fearful of their precious collections going up in smoke. In fact Wheatley’s dual approach was a mixture of prestige and anxiety (or in simpler terms, snobbery and fear) not unlike his thrillers.
Graucob was still keen to give Wheatley his fee, which Wheatley now felt was too generous. He insisted on half the sum, and said that if Graucob would care to treat him and Joan to air tickets to Rhodes, “we should regard that as a very friendly gesture.”
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Wheatley’s guerrilla war with the tax authorities became a strategic conflict in 1960 with the formation of Dennis Wheatley Ltd., a company which would employ Wheatley to write books.
Wheatley had dreamed this up in 1959, and originally wanted to call the firm ‘Bestsellers Ltd.’. The essence of his idea was that he should cease to be a freelance author, writing on his own account, and should instead be employed by a company formed for the purpose of marketing his books.
Wheatley was to be paid a modest £1000 a year, with expenses, but all his financial needs were to be met by the company. They would pay for his secretary, his “accommodation in which to work”, which he already had, his entertaining, his travel between Lymington and London, and his months abroad “for local colour”. In return he would provide one novel a year.
More ambitious possibilities included letting his house to the company, employing Joan as his assistant, and perhaps even receiving no salary but very generous expenses. Wheatley was helped in all this by his accountant, Neville Hayman. Having thought of almost everything, he drafted a letter for Hutchinson’s to send back to him, beginning “Dear Mr Wheatley, In reply to your letter of [blank], I do fully understand that the present tax laws bear harshly on authors such as yourself, and it certainly seems most unfair …”
The upshot was that in February 1960 Dennis Wheatley Ltd was launched, an event that Wheatley would refer back to happily in a speech.
In 1960 I handed myself over bound hand and foot to the Company … Time was when I could work or not as I liked. Things are very different now … For example I might have spent next January February March quietly in my own home. But not a bit of it. I have my orders now and must obey.
His orders were to go to Mexico and climb an Aztec pyramid, go to India, and spend some time in the South Seas. “And all this in the depths of winter,” he added, as if it was further hardship.
The Company continued to send its author off to various locations, no doubt after a little input from Wheatley himself. In May 1962, for example, a letter arrived at Grove Place from Dennis Wheatley Ltd (“Registered Office: Grove Place”). “Dear Mr Wheatley”, it said,
It has occurred to the Directors that no book by you has as its background the Adriatic Coast of Italy and the Dalmatian Coast.
As there is much fascinating history in connection with this part of Europe, the Directors would like you to consider making use of it and, with this intention, they suggest that you should spend a few weeks in the Adriatic.
As Wheatley’s generation used to say, nice work if you can get it.