Very glad to see, according to Saturday’s Times, that antlers are back.

Some of us, of course, have known that for months. Antlers are very now. Especially when affixed to the head with virgin’s blood, worn with an all-enveloping black cloak and accessorised with imps and familiars.

Devilry, of the darkest kind, is back in vogue. And I’m not referring to Simon’s decision to vote for Jedward over Lucie last week. No, a flirtation with forces even blacker than the marketing department of ITV is enjoying a curious revival.

And about time too. For the publication of Phil Baker’s new book The Devil is a Gentleman marks a long overdue revival in the reputation of an unfairly maligned rake. Not Auld Nick himself, of course, but the man who grew rich at his altar, the Dark Lord of Pulp Fiction, Dennis Wheatley.

Baker’s work is a brilliantly illuminating biography of a novelist, now almost forgotten, who enjoyed the sort of prodigious success in the last century that might have led you to imagine he’d sold his soul along with the foreign rights, such was the level of his sales.

But Wheatley’s royalties didn’t come by engaging literary agents from the firm of Faust, Mephistopheles and Screwtape. His riches were due entirely to a very Simon Cowellesque ability to give the public precisely calibrated and finely wrought popular entertainment.

The Devil Rides Out, Wheatley’s most famous novel, may have a dated feel now. But it is dated in the way that a Morgan sports car, or Alan Clark’s Diaries, are dated — there is something rather wonderful about the old-fashioned dash and unself-conscious swagger.

The car chases, double-crossing and police procedure in Wheatley’s novels are all handled as well as in any thriller; but what elevates the whole are the set-piece descriptions of diabolical wickedness; the appearances of the Goat of Mendes, the witches’ sabbath orchestrated by the foully compelling renegade priest, the Canon Damien Mocata. Its all hokum of course, but château-bottled, premier cru St Emilion hokum.

Wheatley may have been dismissed by critics as a peddler of low-brow thrills, camply erotic ritual and snobbery with violence. But neither he, nor his readers, cared. Because what he offered was the sort of superbly paced plotting combined with detailed knowledge of mythology, dark ritual and occult history which remains a compelling mix to this day. Wheatley was the original master of all that was angelic and demonic. What Dan Brown offers in pallid and derivative form Wheatley first served up hot, spicy and addictive. He, of all people, deserves to come back from the dead and win a new following of thrill-starved souls in thrall to his dark magic.

From Satan to saints

Wheatley was always insistent that what he put in his fiction should stay in fiction. His message to any curious reader tempted to flirt with the dark arts was simple — “don’t meddle”. Most earnest rationalists these days would regard the warning as comically superfluous. Since there is manifestly no such thing as Satan, outside the distempered minds of the deluded, anyone tempted to make contact with the Devil is, a priori, already of unsound mind.

But I suspect Wheatley knew rather more about the workings of human nature than today’s fundamentalist Darwinians. And the myths surrounding the Devil that he plundered for use in his thrillers have resonated in so many minds because they embody insights into man’s perennial willfulness. Like the story of the Fall, or Faust himself, behind what looks like hokum lies an eternal truth.

The impulse that drew individuals in the past towards black masses and witches sabbaths, these elaborately contrived rituals that were designed to mock the practices of the Christian Church, was the thrill of transgression, the joy of smashing icons.

Whatever one thinks of arguments about souls, sin and redemption, that transgressive impulse, that desire to mock God, has proven an ineradicable part of human nature. As Richard Dawkins well knows. And, whatever, one thinks of faith, the Church and its traditions, they have always proved a bulwark against the radical selfishness, the will to power, the delight in mastery, that is Man at his worst. Which is why we remember Dietrich Bonhoeffer and honour Pope John Paul II, because when totalitarian regimes encountered their most profound enemies they found them in the Church.

So, faced with those who want to undermine the foundations on which our Christian culture rests, in the name of liberating mankind from superstition, I can only echo Dennis. Don’t meddle.

Being Frank, it’s just not me

Retro chic doesn’t stop at antlers. I also discovered in Saturday’s Times that trench coats are back. I fear, however, this is one trend from which I will have to stand aside. Just as I can never see a beanie hat without thinking of Benny from Crossroads and striped trousers with a black coat makes me think of Captain Peacock from Are You Being Served? I will always associate trench coats with Frank Spencer in Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em. Apparently Burberry is marketing its macs by saying it is democratising fashion, promising to post pictures of trench-coat wearers in all their rich variety on its website. I’ll believe it really has democratised fashion when I see Michael Crawford, beret and all, in his raincoat on a double page spread in Vogue Hommes.

Michael Gove is Conservative MP for Surrey Heath

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