The Dennis Wheatley 'Museum'

The Dennis Wheatley 'Museum' - World War II

DW prepares his household ... and advises others to do the same

DW's column in the Sunday Graphic of 22nd January 1939

DW starts a competition for hoarding (left) and the prize winning solution (right)
Click on the images above to enlarge.

DW and Joan try on their gas masks.
The moment must have had a special poignancy for DW, as he was gassed in World War I

DW practised what he preached.

The above list shows DW's stock of champagne as at 1st January 1943.

As it shows, before war was declared, DW had the wisdom to stash away a staggering 513 bottles of bubbly. By Jan 1943 he and his friends and colleagues had drunk their way through 380 of these bottles as he entertained the 'top brass', and he now had only 133 bottles left. With half the war gone (although DW was not to know that), he had got through almost three quarters of his stock.

With the same foresight, DW also stored away large quantities of other food and drink (including more modest items like cans of soup) before war was declared, while stocks were plentiful and while they were freely and legally available for purchase.

Click on the images above to enlarge.

Even before he was giving his speeches, DW was making preparations for war and advising others to do the same.

In his column in the Sunday Graphic in early 1939 he encouraged his readers to lay in stores of emergency supplies while they were plentiful, against the day when they would be impossible to obtain.

He took his own advice and laid in supplies of luxury goods - cases of fine wines and tins of foie gras, with which he was to regale his friends throughout the coming war.

In the final days before war was declared, having returned from a final holiday in France, he set about building an air raid shelter for his home - getting wine merchants Justerini & Brooks to send him a supply of champagne cases he could fill with rubble to reinforce the walls.

On Sunday 3rd September 1939 at 11 in the morning, DW and his family sat in their drawing room and listened to Chamberlain's announcement that the country was again at war.

References : 'Stranger Than Fiction' Chapter 1.
'Drink and Ink' pp 156,159.
Phil Baker pp 380,385-6.
Craig Cabell Chapter 2.

Provenance:

Private Collection