The Dennis Wheatley 'Museum' - Dennis Wheatley and Ian Fleming

Ian Fleming writes various things in 'Goldfinger' (1959) which might well have left DW unamused

Extracts from Chapters 2 (above) and 11 (below) of 'Goldfinger'

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While it is far from clear whether DW ever read any of the 'Bond' novels, if he did, setting aside any similarities between the physical appearance and characters of Gregory Sallust and James Bond, DW might have been left distinctly unamused by various passages within the books.

Any similarity between DW's villain the voodoo high priest 'Doctor Saturday' in his 'Strange Conflict' (1941) and Fleming's' villain 'Mr Big' in 'Live and Let Die' (1954), who is the head of the 'Black Widow Voodoo cult' and believed by its followers to be Baron Samedi apart, there are various other places in Fleming's novels which seem either to be derivative of, or even perhaps written to annoy DW. As examples, a couple of passages from 'Goldfinger' (written in early 1958 and published in March 1959), come to mind:

In Chapter Two of 'Goldfinger' one of the characters orders 'Two pints of pink champagne. The Pommery '50. Silver tankards. Right?'. DW might well have considered the drinking of champagne out of silver tankards to be an affectation that he himself had invented, since it had been the drinking affectation of his character Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust from as early as his second Gregory Sallust novel, 'Contraband' (1936).

Further on, in Chapter Eleven, Goldfinger explains to Bond why he does not drink alcohol, and after discussing its bad effects in general, he gives Bond his worst-case example: "Never drink so-called Napoleon brandy, particularly when it is described as 'aged in the wood'. That particular potion contains more of the poisons I have mentioned than any other liquor that I have analysed."

Not perhaps particularly welcome reading to someone who boasted he had started the 'old Brandy racket' in his youth (Click here to see DW's account of how he did this, taken from one of the pages in the DW Museum, Room Five).