The Dennis Wheatley 'Museum' - Champions of Reincarnation: Dennis Wheatley & Joan Grant

The 'Duke de Richleau' reads Joan Grant

Joan Grant's 'Winged Pharaoh'
is the Duke's preferred reading in
'Codeword Golden Fleece'

Click on the images to enlarge

When DW published his first post-war De Richleau novel in May 1946 - and it was not an occult novel - when he sent the Duke to bed in Bucharest, he sent the Duke to bed with his favourite reading material :

"Getting into bed, he (i.e. the Duke) read for a little, and for the twentieth time, a few passages of that wonderful book of Joan Grant's, Winged Pharaoh, a copy of which always travelled with him. Then he put out the light."

Later on in the series, when he is dying at the end of 'Dangerous Inheritance' (published in 1965), the Duke re-affirms to his friends the reality of re-incarnation, and Roger Brook does much the same when he is faced with unavoidable death at the end of 'Desperate Measures' (published in 1974).

These were very much 'signature pieces', but there are also other affirmations of DW's belief in reincarnation and the astral body in some of DW's other novels, such as his non 'Black Magic' Duke de Richleau novels 'The Golden Spaniard' and 'Vendetta in Spain'.

References : 'The Golden Spaniard'(1938), Chapter 22, 'Out of the Boiling Oil', pages 261-2.
'Codeword Golden Fleece' (1946), Chapter 12, 'Death in the Afternoon', page 171
'Vendetta in Spain' (1961), Chapter 8, 'The Ordeal in the Mill', page 128.

Page references taken from First Editions