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Post by dem bones on Jan 23, 2009 10:14:01 GMT
It was about this time (1936) we met Sir Charles Birkin. He was London’s most eligible bachelor, rich, good-looking, generous with a caustic wit, and he later wrote gripping short horror stories. His sight was so poor that he could have evaded conscription on those grounds, but he had contact lenses fitted, served for a time in the ranks and later became an officer in the Tank Corps. Dennis Wheatley - The Time Has Come. . . The Memoirs Of Dennis Wheatley. Drink And Ink 1919-1977 (Anchor, 1979) 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 sheds some light on how he came to help persuade him back into authorship in the 'sixties, because after Devil Spawn (1936), Birkin falls right off the radar for over a quarter of a century as far as horror fiction is concerned. It wasn't until 1964 that he came back into view with the collection A Kiss Of Death and two new stories for Wheatley collections; A Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts ( Shafts Of Fear, Arrow, 1964) and A Right To Know, ( Quiver Of Horror, Arrow, 1964). Dennis Wheatley also contributes a foreword to the first two Birkin comeback collections, albeit after his own fashion. He at least contributes a page to The Kiss Of Death. For The Smell Of Evil he begins: "In my introduction to Charles Birkin's first collection of horror stories The Kiss Of Death I maintained that ..." ... and then regurgitates the first foreword verbatim without adding a single word by way of praise or damnation for The Smell Of Evil! Finally, the (entirely benevolent) spectre in Birkin's atypical Zara And Zita ( Tandem Book Of Ghost Stories, 1965) is a dashing young fellow named 'Giles Wheatley'.
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