The Dennis Wheatley 'Museum' - Dennis Wheatley in World War II: a supplement

Mr Bell organises the now-famous photo-shoot

The un-cropped original of the iconic LCS photo, autographed by Messrs Morley, Peteval and Wheatley,
and below, the caption in Mr Bell's handwriting

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A hitherto unknown additional group photograph

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One of the things that Mr Bell did was to arrange the now iconic photograph of the London Controlling Section. As can be seen from his notes, this took place in November 1944, several months after the D-Day landings.

What we can see from Mr Bell's copy of the photograph - autographed by Messrs Morley, Peteval and Wheatley - is that the photograph was cropped before it was printed in 'The Deception Planners', from which it has been re-copied into a variety of other publications and media. I believe this to be the first time that the un-cropped photograph has been displayed. The photograph was clearly one of several taken at the time, because Mr Bell also kept a second and slightly different photograph, which is also displayed here for the first time.

Dennis Wheatley wrote word portraits of his fellow Section members, and the descriptions in his unpublished memoirs are generally fuller - and more entertaining - than those which made their way into 'The Deception Planners'.

Those interested can click on the links below to read them. The persons are listed in the order in which when they joined the Section:

• Johnny Bevan
• Harold Peteval
• Ronald Wingate
• James Arbuthnott
• Neil Gordon Clarke
• Derrick Morley
• Lady Jane Pleydell-Bouverie
• Alec Finter (on secondment)

Not in picture:

• Sir Reginald Hoare
• Professor Andrade

The individuals' dates of arrival in the Section and other factual information about them can be found in Room Eight of the virtual Museum. To visit it, click here.