In Dennis Wheatley's recollections, the most important episodes of his life appear to have been his periods of military service in both world wars. Born in 1897, he served in the First World War, as a second lieutenant on the Western Front, being invalided home in May 1918. During the Second World War Wheatley was recommissioned as a wing commander in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve and was attached to the Joint Planning Staff of the War Cabinet. Between the wars he managed the family firm of Mayfair wine merchants until the business failed in the general trade depression of 1931. Unemployed and short of money, Wheatley turned to writing. His first novel, The Forbidden Territory, published in January 1933, was an immediate popular success. Hutchinson of London published the book and remained Wheatley's publishers thereafter. He wrote more than fifty novels, two volumes of short stories, and a few works of biography and popular history; but substantial memoirs, published in the 1970s (Wheatley died in 1977), say relatively little about his career as writer.¹ There is some additional information in the author's prefatory notes scattered through the short-story collections.