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

DW makes some references to Fleming and Bond in 'Unholy Crusade' (1967)

Two excerpts from Chapters 1 and 15 of 'Unholy Crusade' (1967)
(enlargements underneath each)

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For a transcript, click here

Ian Fleming gets a mention in DW's book 'Unholy Crusade', which was published in 1967, some three years after Ian Fleming's death. The hero's publisher, downplaying the amount an author is likely to earn, tells him that:

'He must not be misled by the incomes made by such writers as Agatha Christie, Somerset Maugham, Dennis Wheatley, Ian Fleming, J.B. Priestley, A.J. Cronin, Howard Spring and a few others of that kind. They could be counted on the fingers of two hands.'

DW was clearly acknowledging the success of Fleming, but perhaps by placing himself before Fleming intimating that he was the more successful of the two.

There is also an interesting reference to the James Bond books in the same book.

In Chapter 15, when a person from British Intelligence is briefing the hero on how to carry out some covert surveillance, he says:

'I mean real secret service agents don't have daggers that spring out of the toes of their shoes, cars that eject flame and tintacks in the path of their pursuers, and all those other silly, amusing gadgets that one reads about in the James Bond books.'

This reference to 'silly, amusing gadgets... in the James Bond books' is not terribly flattering, but it is also not entirely correct.

The dagger that emerges from Rosa Klebb's shoe does indeed appear the book 'From Russia with Love' (1957), as well as in the film (1963).

However, the car that ejects 'flame and tintacks' in the path of its pursuers is only to be found in the Bond films - in Fleming's book 'Goldfinger' (published in 1959; filmed in 1964), Bond's Aston Martin D.B.III (which makes its first appearance in this book) is equipped with far cruder gadgets:

'The D.B. III... [had] certain extras that might or might not come in handy. These included switches to alter the type and colour of Bond's front and rear lights if he was following or being followed at night, reinforced steel bumpers, fore and aft, in case he needed to ram, a long-barrelled Colt .45 in a trick compartment under the driver's seat, a radio pick-up tuned to receive an apparatus called the Homer, and plenty of concealed space that would fox most Customs men.'

Indeed, and in contrast to the gadget-laden films, in the book of 'From Russia with Love' (1957), in one passage, as James Bond is about to be killed by a SMERSH assassin on a train, he laments:

'...if only it [his cigarette] had been a trick one - magnesium flare, or anything he could throw in the man's face! If only his Service went in for those explosive toys!'

In other words the toys that DW so much derided were very much the antithesis of what was to be found in the Bond books themselves - which, unlike the films - were far less 'tech'.

This raises again the question of whether DW ever read the books - or whether he had only watched the films. If he had read the Bond books, DW certainly wasn't being very fair to Fleming - and DW was generally a pretty fair-minded man.