When the Devil Visited Wales When I was at school it was considered de rigueur for boys in the fifth form to read certain novels. James Herbert’s gruesome work, The Rats comes to mind. As does the author Dennis Wheatley who wrote a number of horror thrillers between the 1930s and the 1960s. Wheatley died in 1977 and I recall watching him on a television programme around that time declare that “the devil is a real person.” Thomas Sheridan has described Wheatley, with his detailed accounts of magic rituals as a whistle blower on the upper echelons of the British ruling class and what they get up to behind the scenes in their mansions and stately homes. One of the more famous of his novels is The Devil Rides Out , a 1934 tale in which the heroes, the Duke de Richleau and his colleague Rex Van Ryn rescue their friend Simon Aron from the clutches of a satanic group operating from a stately home on Salisbury Plain. The novel was later made into a film replete with rituals and car...