The Library

Hello Lark I agree with Bob in that it's nothing a good period TV series couldn't fix (or a film: look what The Devil Rides Out did for his career in the sixties). I first read him in the early eighties and nearly gave up altogether on the likes of Ka Of Gifford Hillary , not because his politics ar...

I think some of your members would kill me Bob!

I'll get a scan to you over the next few days, Bob. The way the quote trails off into "..." suggests this might be taken from an introduction to the book, but then again, it might not. I don't want to build your hopes up ...

The first issue of Justin Marriott's Pulpmania is now available. On the surface, this may hold little interest for DW fans, but, there's a juicy snippet concerning The Dennis Wheatley Library Of The Occult during the excellent Michel Parry interview. The gist of it is that DW provided a list of book...

Recently, by a stroke of outrageous good fortune, I picked up three bound volumes of The Unexplained magazine in a charity shop. I'm not sure of the dates (seventies? eighties?), but the entire back cover of issue 26 is given over to an advertisement for Brian Innes' The Tarot and Horoscopes , publi...

Thanks, both of you.

By a stroke of luck there's a copy of The Irish Witch lurking about here some place ...

*consults pathetic "library*

... found it!

I'll give it a go ....

How did I miss this thread before? These are great!

Unfortunately the only one I've read of these is Gateway ... , and I've been horrible enough about that already

Do any of the Roger Brooks' touch upon the "supernatural"?

I love the Fontana series, and the 'European' and 'Oriental' collections both have a strong claim to being the best of the bunch - J. J. Strating's selections are virtually all instant classics. I'm with you: I'd love to see an enterprising publisher produce the equivalent of these 200 page paperbac...

Here goes for some English editions: Ghost Stories From London edited by Jacquelyn Visick was published over here as London Tales Of Terror (Fontana in 1972) Contents & cover Ghost Stories From Wales edited by R. Chetwynd-Hayes was published over here as Welsh Tales Of Terror by Fontana in 1972 ...

Welcome Diamondhairedan I'm certainly in agreement with you on Gateway To Hell . I can't help thinking that, if DW wanted to give the Duc and his friends another 'black magic' adventure, he'd have made a better fist of it if he'd written it in the 'forties or 'fifties. I've still not gotten around t...

Funny enough, the excellent Locus aren't very good on Birkin, Jim. Give me a couple of days and I'll pm you a list of his antho appearances, OK? If you've a copy of the '3rd Pan Book Of Horror Stories' you're off to a good start as he's got four stories in there (three credited to his pseudonym, Cha...

Thank you kindly for that, Bob. It certainly fills in a few gaps. Actually, by 1936, Birkin had a string of horror stories under his belt and he'd edited 14 books of same, admittedly under the fairly transparent pseudonym of Charles Lloyd. The fact that Wheatley knew him from way back when at least ...

Everything else is from Century ... , but Wheatley wanted to introduce a "new" author to bring the collection up to date. If you haven't already done so, try Birkin's A Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts from Shafts Of Fear . Too many stories get hyped as the most horrific of all time, but in this c...

Thanks very much for that, Bob. More of a postal, business relationship then, by the looks of it and Wheatley comes out of it well. The other person I'm interested in is Sir Charles Birkin. He'd edited the Creeps series in the 'thirties, had a collection of his own stories, Devil Spawn , published i...

I've only ever read the 'black magic' ones, but I certainly prefer the Duke and his entourage to 'Conkey Bill' and the curtain-twitchers. I'd go for "The Devil Rides Out" as being the one I enjoyed most, with '"Strange Conflict" not far behind - both were exciting and he created ...