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This article examines the ways in which James Herbert's The Spear (1978) attempted to combine nineteenth century gothic with the contemporary thriller. The novel deals with the activities of a neo-Nazi organisation, and the essay draws parallels between Herbert's deployment of National Socialism and the treatment of Roman Catholicism in earlier Gothic texts. Contextualising the novel within a wider fascination with Nazism in 1970s' popular culture, it also considers the ethical difficulties in applying techniques from supernatural Gothic to secular tyranny.

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'Horror linked to history': Nazism and Popular Culture1

When James Herbert published his fifth novel, The Spear , in 1978, he had already

distinguished himself as an insistently topical writer in works that blended con-

temporary anxieties with more traditional Gothic ingredients. His first book, The

Rats (1974), was set in a London still disfigured by bombsites three decades after

the last V2 had fallen on the capital, and fed on widespread unease about inner-city

decay as well as an obvious phobia of carnivorous rodents.2 His second, The Fog

(1975), dealt with the accidental release of a dangerous gas, and exploited increas-

ing public suspicion of military and governmental authority as well as environ-

mentalists' alarms concerning pollution. His subsequent novels, The Survivor

(1976), and Fluke (1977), branched out into explicitly supernatural fiction, but

again, Herbert was keenly attuned to the concerns of his time. The Survivor 's focus

on a plane crash made it a chilling holiday read for a generation of tourists just

discovering relatively affordable air travel, while Fluke combined a whimsical

animal story with the era's interest in reincarnation. The Spear however tapped

into a far more troubling preoccupation: the legacy of Nazism and the possibility

of its return. In dramatising these subjects, Herbert's novel often seems to present

Nazism in ways that recall the portrayal of Roman Catholicism in earlier Gothic

texts, and it is this 'Nazi Gothic'that will be considered in the remainder of the

essay.

Although examples could be cited from before 1939,Anglo-American popular

culture's fascination with Nazism really began with propaganda films and satirical

comedies during World War II.3 With the defeat of Germany, both American and

British film industries lost no time in replaying the war's edited highlights, but

there were important differences between the two nations. The United States

mainland had escaped the devastation visited upon British cities, and had not suf-

fered chronic food and other shortages during the conflict. The American econ-

omy ended the war in a powerful position, but the situation in debt-crippled

Britain was far less rosy.The rationing of key foods and goods until 1953, and the

introduction of the National Service Act in 1947, meant that aspects of wartime life

'A decadent appetite for the lurid'?:

James Herbert, The Spear and 'Nazi Gothic'

Nick Freeman University of Loughborough

chap 6 8/9/06 2:23 pm Page 80

persisted for years after the conflict itself had ended: National Service continued

until 1960. By the 1950s, the States had embraced a new era of consumerism, and,

while it celebrated its military achievements, it looked forward rather than back-

wards. The British, by contrast, returned repeatedly to the past. This obsessive

reconsideration of the war continues to have a major effect upon British culture.

During the period c.1945–c.1960, British literature and film typically concerned

themselves with quasi-realist evocations of four aspects of the war. These were the

successes of daring military operations such as the 1943 Dambusters' Raid, heroic

escapes from German prisoner-of-war camps, the crimes committed by the Nazis

in occupied Europe and Russia, and the experience of the 'Home Front'.4 With a

few exceptions – Noel Coward's Peace in our Time (1947) and Sarban's The Sound

of His Horn (1952) – cultural production tended to remain within these admittedly

broad areas until the early 1960s, when new, often more subversive, responses to

the conflict and its aftermath began to manifest themselves.These did not entirely

displace previous modes, in that the war remained both excellent box office

material and a subject for serious moral and political reflection. However, works

such as the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe (1960) and later,Angus Calder's study

of life in wartime Britain, The People's War (1969), showed an increasing willing-

ness to interrogate received images of the conflict.

From questioning, even satirising the war, the next step was to imagine having

lost it. The Sound of His Horn had described vast areas of Europe transformed into

game reserves, where Nazi foresters hunted genetically modified humans. Ten

years later,Philip K.Dick's The Man in the High Castle (1962) offered a rare exam-

ple of the United States imagining defeat in its depiction of a country split into

Japanese and German zones of occupation, while back in Britain, Kevin Brownlow

and Andrew Mollo dramatised the consequences of a Nazi invasion in their

remarkable film, It Happened Here (1963).5

As Michael Burleigh reminds us, the continued interest in the Nazi regime has

almost buried historical truths 'beneath the avalanche of morbid kitsch and pop-

ulistic trivia' that characterises 'a decadent appetite for the lurid', and such

appetites are especially titillated by the Nazi penchant for torture and sexual

abuse.6 In the first decade or so after the war,accounts of this behaviour had been

muted, at least in film, and had invariably served as a backdrop to stories of indi-

vidual heroism. A typical example is R. J. Minney's account of Violette Szarbo's

captivity and execution, Carve Her Name With Pride (1956, filmed 1958),a book

even available in children's editions.Fifteen years later, such narratives had under-

gone unpleasant reinvention in European pornographic films and controversial

'art' cinema such as Liliana Cavani's The Night Porter (1973) and Pier Paolo

Pasolini's mixture of Fascism and De Sade, Salo (1975). Mainstream commenta-

tors denounced these productions – Halliwell's Film Guide still regards Cavani's as

'downright deplorable' and Pasolini's as 'thoroughly revolting' – but there was

clearly a substantial audience for such material.7 Erwin Dietrich, who owned the

copyright to the Ilsa series that began with She Wolf of the SS (1974), made a sub-

stantial sum from it during the 1970s, and its popularity continued as home video

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proliferated in the following decade. By 1996, Ilsa could be deemed 'a common

video rental' and a decade later even featured in academic articles.8 Whether writ-

ers and filmmakers should pander to the tastes of Ilsa 's audience is a question that

has clear relevance where The Spear is concerned.

Nazi occult experimentation may not have offered the same opportunities for

pornographers as death camps and military brothels, but this did not mean that its

treatment was any less sensational. Works such as Louis Pauwels and Jacques

Bergier's Le Matin des Magiciens (1960), Trevor Ravenscroft's The Spear of Destiny

(1972), and J.H. Brennan's still more outlandish Occult Reich (1974) captured the

popular imagination. Ravenscroft's book is still in print,as is its sequel, The Mark

of the Beast (1990), and a paperback reprint of Le Matin des Magiciens claimed a

million copies had been sold by 1971 alone.9 All were fixated by supposedly secret

or suppressed histories: the 1976 reprint of Brennan's book boasts that it deals 'in

facts – but facts that orthodox historians ignore.' Since the appearance of Nicholas

Goodrich-Clark's The Occult Roots of Nazism (1985), such works seem poorly

researched and hysterically argued,but they were accorded considerable popular

interest in the mid-1970s when Herbert was writing The Spear . As if to prove that

even a stopped clock is right twice a day,they were also accurate in some respects.

The Thule Society had certainly existed in Weimar and Nazi Germany; Himmler's

Ahnenerbe organisation pursued strange and dangerous research throughout the

1930s and 1940s; and the Spear of Longinus, the weapon supposedly wielded by

the centurion who wounded Christ during the Crucifixion, still reposes in a

Viennese museum.

Any sub-divisions or hierarchies that this catalogue may imply were by no

means fixed and could certainly be perverted by their interpreters. Ghoulish thrill

seekers read historical studies such as Lord Russell's The Scourge of the Swastika

(1954) and William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960) for their

detailed accounts of atrocities rather than for denunciations of their perpetrators.

As Colin Wilson observes,there was 'a dreadful inevitability' in the choice of Moors

Murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley's first visit to the cinema together: Judge-

ment at Nuremburg (1961).10 Even those texts that claimed the high ground of his-

torical veracity risked being misread by certain sectors of their audience, especially

when they bore titles such as Scourge of the Swastika , but less worthy books and

films openly courted such responses, a process adroitly satirised by Mel Brooks'

film, The Producers (1967). Punk's use of the swastika in widening generation gaps,

which reached a would-be outrageous extreme in the Sex Pistols''Belsen was a Gas'

(1978), is only one example of this process.

Finally,a number of works dealt with the revival of Nazism in the contemporary

world. Thriller writers speculated about the fate of Nazis who had escaped justice

at the end of the war in novels such as Frederick Forsythe's The Odessa File (1972,

filmed 1974) and William Goldman's Marathon Man (1974, filmed 1976).Others

went further in imagining fascist rebirths. Some were Nazi sympathisers –

the American William Pierce, for instance, who published the notorious The

Turner Diaries (1978) under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald – but most were

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opportunistic rather than politically committed, and addressed strikingly diverse

audiences. Ira Levin's The Boys From Brazil (1976, filmed 1978), and Stephen

King's 'Apt Pupil', from Different Seasons (1983, filmed 1997) offered disturbing

considerations of the Nazi legacy. By contrast, the cryogenically suspended SS

men of Herbert J. Leeder's 'irredeemably daft'film, The Frozen Dead (1966) were

trivial and absurd.11 Alistair MacLean's Bear Island (1971, filmed 1979) offered a

delirious mixture of neo-Nazis and stolen wartime gold. Even children's television

seemed fascinated by the Third Reich,with the science fiction series, The Tomor-

row People, speculating about Nazi plans for genetic warfare in 'Hitler's Last Secret'

(1978).12 At the same time,'Nazi hunters' and their publishers appropriated the

language and promotional devices of the thriller in works such as Erich Erdstein's

Inside the Fourth Reich (1978),the 1979 paperback edition of which claimed to be

'The Real Story of the Boys from Brazil.'13

Popular fiction and cinema of the 1970s often took its subject matter from

World War II, but it found Nazism particularly engrossing. Despite the efforts of

documentaries such as The World at War (1975), a generation that had not experi-

enced their brutal realities pored over Hitler, the SS, the Gestapo, and lavish polit-

ical spectacles such as the Nuremburg Rallies.The facts of Nazi rule, in particular

the concentration camps, tended to be overlooked, with some sympathisers refus-

ing to admit their existence altogether.14 A Nazi 'look'or image that equated the

physical manifestations of National Socialism with the uniform of the SS became

increasingly visible through the rise of punk, the S/M subculture that its fashions

allowed, and continued media coverage of 'Hell's Angels' known for their fondness

for Nazi regalia. The SS was granted an elitism and glamour that Himmler himself

might have fostered.15 Such irresponsible sartorial experiment, criticised by Susan

Sontag as 'the theatricalization of sexuality', showed a contempt for the victims of

Nazism and for a German public on both sides of the Berlin Wall still coming to

terms with the Hitler era.16 As British politics swung between Edward Heath's inef-

fectual Conservatives and the rapidly unravelling Labour party of Harold Wilson

and James Callaghan, far right groups such as the National Front saw Nazism as a

defensible, even desirable, political philosophy. This created considerable racial

unrest in major cities, prompting the formation of counter-organisations such as

the Anti-Nazi League.17 It was against this background that The Spear was pub-

lished in the autumn of 1978.

'Creepy and Compulsive Reading': The Spear's Publication and Trial18

The Spear was not the first novel to mix Nazism and the occult. That dubious dis-

tinction probably belongs to Dennis Wheatley's Strange Conflict (1941),a sequel of

sorts to The Devil Rides Out (1935) which 'uneasily extends World War II espi-

onage to the astral plane.'19 Herbert did not entirely abandon this idea, but while

Wheatley wallowed in mumbo-jumbo, Herbert's more streamlined approach

grafted the speculative pseudo-history of Ravenscroft and Brennan onto the fast-

moving thriller structure he had employed so effectively in The Rats .20 The result

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is a surprisingly complex blend of genres and topical concerns that derives consid-

erable capital from its cultural and political background, as well as from conspir-

acy theories surrounding the death of senior Nazis. Herbert's fiction mixed

dynamic plotting with scenes of unrestrained savagery unlike anything in contem-

porary British horror writing. The graphic violence and explicit sex of The Rats

forced older writers to confront the very changes that had already tolled the death

knell for Hammer Films'costumed Gothic.21 Herbert, followed by a wave of imi-

tators led by Guy N.Smith, represented new blood in every sense. Unfortunately,

his publisher,New English Library (NEL), did not yet appreciate the seismic shift

taking place in British horror, and insisted on promoting Herbert as a writer of

'nasties', the vicious style associated with their skinhead and Hell's Angel series and

American EC comics.22 Herbert was profoundly unhappy about such treatment,

and lost no time reinventing himself as a more 'serious'horror novelist when he

left the company for Hodder in 1986.23

Despite, perhaps even because of, NEL's typecasting of its author, The Spear was

an immediate commercial success.It also marked a new phase of Herbert's creative

development in which he 'stepped out of the pulp arena altogether and entered the

wider field of the mainstream novel.'24 Unlike his earlier books, The Spear was care-

fully planned rather than improvised during its composition. It was also more

thoroughly researched, relatively speaking, than its predecessors, its engagement

with history requiring background reading of 'thirty or forty books'.25 Each chap-

ter was prefaced with a quotation from Hitler or other leading Nazis,foreground-

ing historical works such as Hermann Rauschning's Hitler Speaks (1939), and

Hugh Trevor-Roper's Hitler's Table Talk, 1941–4 (1953) in order to narrow the gap

between lurid fantasy and the actual horrors of the past. Quotations were not ref-

erenced or dated: what mattered was their memorable phrasing, their seeming

anticipation and support of the book's content and their establishing of Herbert's

credentials as a researcher. With the success of Frederick Forsythe and Len

Deighton, thrillers had become increasingly concerned with plausibility. The

meticulous detail of works such as Forsythe's The Day of the Jackal (1971) had

much the same effect on fantasies of the Ian Fleming school as Walter Scott's his-

torical novels had had on Radcliffean Gothic. As an astute observer of contempo-

rary trends in popular fiction, Herbert had to take this into account in preparing

his novel.

Unfortunately for him however, one the works he consulted was The Spear of

Destiny, and Trevor Ravenscroft lost no time in claiming that there were fifty

instances of unauthorised borrowing from his work in Herbert's story. As he had

freely admitted his use of Ravenscroft's book in his acknowledgements, and as

Ravenscroft had himself plagiarised Hugh Trevor-Roper's writings on Hitler,

Herbert refused Ravenscroft's demand for £25,000 in compensation. A court case,

and, more sinisterly, a strange experience on a Sussex train that he half-humor-

ously interprets as a possible psychic attack by Ravenscroft, ensued.26

Presided over by Mr Justice Brightman, the case ran from March to June 1979.

Although bizarre and frequently farcical in detail, it was nonetheless a fascinating

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insight into the English class system and the cultural position of horror fiction in

1970s' Britain. Herbert's working class origins and earlier career in advertising

made an unfavourable impression on Brightman, who indulged the Sandhurst-

educated Ravenscroft despite the preposterous nature of his claims. The case is

surely the only time in British legal history in which the prosecution has main-

tained that its actions are founded upon 'facts gained by transcendental medita-

tion'.27 Stranger still was Ravenscroft's admission that he had met Herbert when

the two of them had been executed on either side of Christ. Whatever else this may

have been, it was a tacit suggestion that both men were thieves, but Brightman

nonetheless found in favour of the prosecution, although he ruled that any plagia-

rism was accidental and that no damages were payable. His summing up drifted

from rumination on the occult to a backhanded recognition of Herbert's abilities.

'Mr Herbert does not think of himself as a serious novelist', Brightman remarked,

but 'one must not underestimate the commercial attraction of the rubbish I have

attempted to describe.' He finished with a resonant characterisation of Gothic fic-

tion and its audience,'The book is written with much inventiveness and a racy flow

of language and incident, and the numerous scenes of violence exercise a strong

appeal to certain readers.'28 This description could be applied to dozens of Gothic

novels since The Monk upped their sex and horror stakes in 1796, and it remains a

telling snapshot of Gothic's status during the 1970s, at least when it was produced

by a writer of 'nasties'and published by NEL.

As a consequence of Brightman's judgement, the first edition of The Spear was

withdrawn from sale, and all contested passages were cut from subsequent print-

ings, along with any acknowledgement of Ravenscroft's work. In the aftermath of

an expensive and humiliating court case, and death threats from National Front

members outraged by The Spear's anti-Nazi stance and heroic Jewish protagonist,

it is scarcely surprising that Herbert's next novel was the markedly less controver-

sial Lair (1979), a sequel to The Rats .'I don't like The Spear very much', he told an

interviewer in 1983, 'It holds far too many bad memories for me.'29

Herbert may have been eager to put the whole affair behind him,but while he

busied himself with his next novel, The Jonah , the paperback edition of The Spear ,

published in April 1980, proved difficult to ignore. Michael Osborn's cover design

was bright red with black and gold German gothic script, and featured a flaming

swastika with the spear thrust into the title lettering. With the paperback of Len

Deighton's SS-GB also prominently displayed in shops during 1980, and the noise

terrorists of Motorhead touring Britain with their war-themed Bomber set, the

British public could have been forgiven for assuming that Anglo-German hostili-

ties had flared up once again.30 Clearly, Basil Fawlty's desperate plea, 'Don't

mention the war', had fallen on deaf ears.31

As Brightman had said, The Spear certainly possessed 'raciness' and 'incident'

aplenty, and demonstrated Herbert's ability to combine an overall thriller struc-

ture with horrific individual incidents and ghostly supernaturalism. 'The nice

thing about Horror is that it's a big umbrella to work under', Herbert observes.'You

can do romance, you can do humour,you can do politics, you can do religion .. .

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you can go into other fields, and still bring it back to Horror at the end of the day.'32

As his rivals churned out imitations of The Rats , unleashing plagues of crabs,

blowflies, and even locusts on Britain, he turned his attention to neo-Nazism and

the sinister ambitions of the Thule Society.33

The Spear's plot concerns an ex-Mossad (Israeli intelligence) agent,Harry Stead-

man, now running a small detective agency in London.When Mossad asks him to

find a missing agent, he swiftly rejects their offer. Unfortunately, his partner,

Maggie Wyeth, takes the case, only to be brutally murdered: in a trademark set

piece, Steadman finds her naked body nailed to the frame of his front door with

her tongue ripped out. British intelligence now becomes involved,and Steadman

finds himself tracking Edward Gant, a mysterious arms dealer.

Steadman's investigations lead him to discover that Gant is fronting a neo-Nazi

organisation, the Thule Gesellschaft , which seems to have infiltrated governments

and intelligence services throughout the world: Brightman was doubtless not

amused by the suggestion that neo-Nazis had even taken over the British '"old

school tie" network' (174). The society claims possession of the Heilige Lance ,

and intends to use it in a monstrous bid to revive its spiritual leader, Heinrich

Himmler, and destabilise Jewish–Arab relations.34 Helped by Holly Miles, an

American photojournalist who is actually a CIA agent, Steadman succeeds in

defeating the conspiracy at the eleventh hour,but not before a tense finale in which

he battles the revived SS leader with the spear itself.

Such a plot-line gave Herbert ample scope for detailed accounts of violence – the

torture and murder of the female Mossad agent in chapter twelve is notably

unpleasant – and for lengthy summaries of Nazi occult doctrine. It also allowed

him to combine fashionable occult interests with ingredients from successful

British thrillers of the past. Steadman's encounters with malign foreigners in rural

England are in some ways reminiscent of Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male (1939)

or the novels of John Buchan, while Gant's disabilities and megalomania put him

on a par with Ian Fleming's Dr No (1958) and other villains from the Bond cycle.

Indeed, a major reason for Herbert's success during the 1970s was his ability to

graft his graphic horror onto more venerable stock drawn from thrillers, ghost sto-

ries and works such as Daphne Du Maurier's 'The Birds' (1952) in which animals

terrorised humanity. The relationship between The Spear and older forms of

Gothic writing is especially interesting, not least because its treatment of the Nazis

offers clear parallels with first wave Gothic's portrayal of Roman Catholicism.

Nazism and Roman Catholicism

Beleaguered English Protestant writers were fearful of, and yet fascinated by,

Catholicism during and immediately after the Napoleonic Wars, and produced a

biased and inaccurate version of Catholic belief in an attempt to place the Roman

church at a geographical and historical remove from contemporary English life.

This allowed readers to enjoy contemplating its depravity at a safe distance, though

the appeal of such narratives markedly decreased once Catholic invasion was no

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longer a threat. In the late twentieth century, the situation was rather different in

that the process of 'Gothicising' National Socialism only began once its reality had

been overthrown, fascist totalitarianism being both too horrible to contemplate

and too horrible not to contemplate. Nonetheless, there are several significant

similarities between the treatment of Catholicism and the treatment of Nazism in

Gothic narratives. Ironically, Herbert is himself Roman Catholic, and 'in a funny

way – very,very religious' though he is not a churchgoer.35 Whether this influenced

The Spear is a moot point, but the fanatical Edward Gant is quite willing to draw

some audacious parallels, telling Steadman:

Signs, symbols, rituals – all are used by occultists to evoke power, just as the Eucharist

and the Mass are used in the Church to evoke power.Whether that power is used for

good or bad is up to whoever calls on it. Think of how the Catholic Church has abused

its use over recent centuries, the crimes committed in God's name.(118–19)

Theologians might quibble over this interpretation of the Eucharist, or see

Gant's characterisation of Catholics as merely a new version of Lutheran extrem-

ism. Nonetheless,the implication that Catholicism is indivisible from occultism in

its reverence for symbols and ritual is a familiar one in Gothic fiction as David

Punter and Victor Sage have shown.For English and Irish Protestant writers such

as Matthew Lewis and Charles Maturin, Catholicism was both Other and a terri-

ble warning to the English never to surrender the progressive rationalism and

secular statehood initiated by Henry VIII's break with Rome. Lewis caricatured

Catholicism as a relic of a more superstitious age, but he was well aware of fears of

Catholic resurgence and foreign invasion. However determinedly he may have

believed that Catholicism, Latinate, idolatrous and regressive, could never re-

establish its hold over the English people, Lewis would also have seen how it had

never been entirely eradicated on the British mainland.'In [the] contrast between

a pleasurably scandalized English reader and a degenerate Catholic Continent,

sunk back in priest-ridden Medievalism, we appear to have the makings of modern

English Europhobia', Robert Miles remarks. 36 Perhaps, in the event of invasion or

military defeat, the English might return to the Catholic fold, hence, in some ways

at least, Lewis's fascinated circling of the flame in The Monk and elsewhere.

Maturin went still further,for, as Chris Baldick points out,'[t]o attack Catholicism

was not . . . an antiquarian fancy-dress frolic. It was a very serious duty of his voca-

tion, to which he was earnestly committed', and which was fuelled by 'a nightmar-

ish extension of the anxieties he feels about the enduring priestly influence in

Catholic Ireland.'37

It was a similarly Europhobic line of thought that imagined a Nazified Britain

with such enthusiasm, especially once the United Kingdom had been admitted to

the EEC in 1975. Nazism may have been defeated at colossal cost to Britain and her

allies, but the fear remained that certain aspects of Nazi thought, notably

anti-Semitism and racism, were deeply ingrained in British, particularly English,

society. Collaboration with, or even committed endorsement of Nazi ideas, was

not wholly unthinkable. In the 1930s, Herbert's family had witnessed parades by

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Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists in London's East End, and heard the

Duke of Windsor's guarded endorsement of Hitler. Herbert himself had seen

the controversy surrounding Enoch Powell's notorious 'Rivers of Blood' speech in

1968 and the rise of the National Front. During the late 1970s, the spectre of

Anglo-Nazi collaboration had been dramatised in two television series dealing

with the occupation of the Channel Islands, The Dame of Sark (1976) and Enemy

at the Door (1978–80). Both alluded to the ways in which Nazi propaganda had

sought to profit from perceived similarities between the English and German

peoples, hoping for a united front to withstand the threat of'Jewish'Bolshevism.

English susceptibility to fascist ideas had been satirised by Rex Warner's The Aero-

drome in 1941, and thirty years later, the malady lingered on,in explicitly political

thrillers such as Arthur Wise's Who Killed Enoch Powell? (1970) and in more fan-

tastic dystopian visions, Dick Morland's Albion! Albion! (1974) for instance.

In a Britain moving steadily towards the right in the wake of widespread dissat-

isfaction with Callaghan's Labour government, there was a chillingly prophetic

edge to The Spear 's parallel between the paralysis of liberal Weimar Germany and

the Britain of the late 1970s. According to Gant,'degenerates [Jews, Slavs, Marxists]

were gradually seizing control of the state and industry, crippling the country with

their demands and their greedy conniving ways.' The consequence was 'a situation

that is not too unlike the situation in Britain today'(120), a diagnosis with which

many on the right would have been eager to agree,and which Steadman himself

later concedes (161–2). During these years the Conservative MP Alan Clark habit-

ually referred to Enoch Powell as 'The Prophet', and records in his diary an attempt

to convince a German diplomat of the 'genetic need for racial purity' in April

1981.38 Herbert has since claimed that The Spear was 'aimed against the National

Front'who were 'getting a lot of publicity at the time' with 'ideas and doctrines . . .

based on evil and hatred', but the novel's political speeches remain disquieting

ones, especially when seen in their immediate historical context.39 After all, the

issuing of its hardback and paperback editions neatly straddles Margaret

Thatcher's election as Prime Minister in 1979.

There are a number of other similarities between Gothic's treatment of Catholi-

cism and Herbert's representation of the Nazis. The Spear even boasts an especially

duplicitous character called Pope,though this is surely coincidental. Depictions of

Catholicism and Nazism both stress the ritualistic nature of meetings and

ceremonies, uniforms and insignia. They insist upon the idolatry inherent in per-

sonality cults, and the patriarchal basis of their rule. Protestant writers from Ann

Radcliffe's A Sicilian Romance (1790) to Maria Monk's Awful Disclosures (1836)

had portrayed Catholics as lascivious and perverse, and The Spear follows suit in

its portrayal of neo-Nazis. Craven and Köhner are both sexually aroused by tor-

turing women. Gant's genitals were mutilated when he was blown up by a mine at

the end of the war, and he now sublimates sexual passion into acts of appalling cru-

elty.The only female Nazi of importance, Kristina, turns out to be a beautiful her-

maphrodite whose attempt to 'debase' Steadman is foiled when he feels 'a

protuberance that pushed against her clothes and seemed to match his' (183).

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Finally,there are obvious similarities between the Gestapo and the Inquisition in

the vicious hunt for 'heretical'opinions and the willingness to employ sadistic vio-

lence to elicit confession or conversion.

These parallels are by no means unique to The Spear . The torture by hairdryer

in chapter 12 has marked affinities with the dentist's chair sequence of Goldman's

Marathon Man,but both seem cynical and formulaic beside their originator, the

horrific blowtorch scene of Roberto Rossellini's Neo-Realist film, Rome: Open City

(1945). The equation of Nazism with sexual perversion had become routine by the

mid 1970s thanks to films such as The Night Porter , Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS, and

Tinto Brass's Salon Kitty (1978), and in such company, Kristina seems,if anything,

somewhat coy. What is radical about Herbert's novel is the way in which it com-

bines some well-worn stereotypes from other treatments of Nazism with specifi-

cally Gothic ingredients. The Spear draws on stories of ghosts and mummies in its

treatment of Himmler, and includes a sinister German 'mystagogue' (193) whose

channelling of the SS leader's spirit would not have been out of place in Wheatley's

Strange Conflict. By connecting two strands of popular fiction in this manner,

Herbert paved the way for subsequent fusions of Nazism and Gothic, F. Paul

Wilson's The Keep (1981, filmed 1983), for example, or even Steven Spielberg's

extravaganzas, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Last

Crusade (1989).

'His mind saw more than his eyes': Nazis From Beyond the Grave

It was The Spear 's supernatural content that confirmed Herbert's pre-eminent

position in British Gothic, though this status brought with it its own problems. In

the late 1970s, the Horror section of the average British bookshop was still some-

thing of a ghetto, with such fiction's cultural legitimacy extremely contested,and,

on occasion, actively resisted by publishers who feared sales could be harmed by

connotations of respectability. The critical success of the film version of William

Peter Blatty's The Exorcist, nominated for multiple Oscars in 1973, and the will-

ingness of reviewers to take seriously new talents such as Peter Straub and Stephen

King, had led to some changes in the perception of the genre in the United States.

British horror however remained largely marginal and critically unappreciated. In

essence, although it was becoming increasingly visible by 1978, even a writer as

successful as Herbert seems to have been unwilling to be regarded purely as a

horror novelist, hence his enthusiastic appropriation of thriller devices.

Herbert's biggest challenge however was that by the 1970s the horror genre was

increasingly predicated upon the novel rather than the short story. The subtlety

associated with twentieth-century English Gothic from M. R. James to Robert

Aickman was not sustainable in lengthier works. Besides, as the commercial suc-

cess of Herbert Van Thal's Pan horror anthologies was demonstrating, public taste

was moving away from implied menace and towards explicit gore even in short fic-

tion.40 Herbert had few reservations about such writing, but he was unwilling to be

seen as purely 'nasty', claiming, 'I've always loved the good old ghost story.'41 From

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The Survivor onwards, he endeavoured to combine not only the thriller and the

supernatural, but also 'old' and 'new' versions of Gothic. It is therefore unsurpris-

ing that whatever the modish trappings of the narrative as a whole, the horror

scenes in The Spear include both ghostly elements familiar from nineteenth-

century fiction and the detailed accounts of physical suffering popular with Pan's

audience. In chapter eight, Smith, an elderly jeweller co-opted by Mossad for

surveillance purposes, becomes aware of a horrifying presence nearby, a presence

we later learn is the reanimated Heinrich Himmler:

His gaze travelled up the stairway, step by step . . . It was darker just there,a black hole

in the general gloom, but there was someone – something – lurking in that pool of

darkness. His whole body began to shake now, for he felt its evil; it seemed to . . . flow

down the stairs in a vaporous cloud, sweeping over him and chilling his mind.

A movement. A shape began to descend the stairs.

Smith moaned and tried to break away, but his limbs were locked rigid, paralysed

by a fear that was even greater than the night of his family's abduction in Berlin. His

eyes widened as the dark shape emerged from the total blackness of the bend in the

stairs, and his mouth opened to form a scream as the figure became more discernible.

. . . It was just a black shape against the overall darkness of the hallway; but his mind

saw more than his eyes . . .The smell of decay pervaded the air . . .a face came float-

ing down at him as though the shape was bending.

'Oh, dear God,' Smith's moan rose to a wail.'You! Oh God, it can't be!'

It was then he screamed. (95)

Having established the novel's topicality so insistently, it is interesting to see

Herbert falling back on older styles of Gothic in this scene. The short sentences,

and the use of phrases instead of sentences, mark the incident as belonging to

relatively recent popular fiction, but the detail might easily have come from a

Victorian ghost story,since it is no more than an assemblage of its clichés. In Bram

Stoker's 'The Judge's House' (1891), for instance, Malcolmson, a young student,

finds himself facing the malign spirit of a Hanging Judge. The experience produces

'almost a chill of horror' and makes him feel 'as if the blood were running from his

heart as one does in moments of prolonged suspense.' 42 However, while Stoker

shows himself archly aware of generic convention through his 'as one does', Her-

bert offers a rather crude insistence on the terrifying nature of the apparition, and

his attempt to fuse modern styles and political concerns with older generic con-

ventions is only partially successful.

In his later appearances in Gant's Devon fortress, the Wewelsburg, Himmler

feeds from the life energies of his acolytes and possesses the body of the mysta-

gogue who channels his spirit. When Steadman stares into the medium's eyes, his

'blood seemed to stop flowing, and the hair on his neck rose as though a cold hand

had swept it upwards, for he found himself staring into the hate-filled image of SS

Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler' (210). Coming at the end of a chapter, the inci-

dent generates a fair measure of suspense, but again, its reliance on the style of Vic-

torian supernatural fiction weakens its impact. There are only so many ways of

saying that fear makes a character's hair stand on end, and they had been exhausted

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long before 1978. Herbert's vocabulary and imagery are stale, and the attempt

to equate Himmler with 'the true Master – the Anti-Christ! ' (225) founders on

derivative language and overly emphatic italicisation.

Herbert's connection of Himmler, Satan, and the nineteenth-century ghost

story demonstrates his ambition and ingenuity, but also raises a number of ques-

tions. Are Himmler and National Socialism merely avatars of a greater evil, in the

process denying their own despicable specificity? Or is the established rhetoric of

supernatural fiction the only means by which Himmler's evil, and Smith's terror,

can be evoked? Does, and should,Nazism represent a boundary for Gothic writing

where imagined horrors must pale in the face of realities infinitely worse? When

Herbert quotes Hitler as saying 'Why babble about brutality and be indignant

about tortures? The masses want that. They need something that will give them a

thrill of horror', (68) the Nazi's words suggest Brightman's summing up and estab-

lish an uncomfortable connection between the workings of a popular Gothic novel

such as The Spear and the genuine horrors from which it draws its inspiration. The

novel ends up feeding from history and the endorsement of its readers in ways

disturbingly akin to those in which the fictional Himmler feeds on the adulation

of his followers. Herbert's suggestion that the apparition is more terrifying than

Smith's experience of the Holocaust takes the book further into ethically dubious

terrain and demonstrates the problems of placing recent history at the service of

Gothic frisson . To use genocide as an index against which fictional terrors can be

measured seems at best naive.

The final description of Himmler's semi-mummified body, still preserved in a

dusty SS uniform, is more detailed and evocative,reminding those unfamiliar with

his appearance of the Nazi's physical trademarks:

Steadman's horrified gaze travelled up from the jack-boots, across the body, to the

shrunken head that stared sightlessly across the dark chamber.The flesh on the face

was stretched taut, greyish cheekbones showing through clearly, huge festering rents

in the skin alive with tiny, white moving shapes. The yellow skin at the throat sagged

over the shirt collar,a shrivelled sack resembling a balloon that had been punctured.

The lower lip had been eaten away revealing an uneven row of teeth stumps, and

white, wispy hair clung sparsely to the upper lip.The face appeared chinless, as though

the jawbone had receded back into the throat. One ear was missing completely,while

all that remained of the other was a remnant of twisted, dried flesh. Thin strands of

white hair hung from beneath the cap, whose peak fell low over the forehead, several

sizes too big.

Peculiarly, pince-nez glasses were stuck firmly against the bridge of the nose . . .

and one eye had escaped from the retaining socket and pressed against a lens. The tip

of the nose was missing but the rest, although wrinkled and pitted, was intact. As

Steadman watched, something black crawled from a nostril and scurried down the

lower lip into the gaping mouth, disappearing from sight. (241)

Steadman is sick at this point, but the physical grotesquery of the description

cannot conceal glaring weaknesses. Why, when Himmler supposedly lived in

anonymity until 1967, is he dressed in his abandoned SS regalia? Why, when his

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physical body has been an object of veneration for his worshippers, has it been

allowed to get into such a state – dusty, dishevelled,and maggot-infested, especially

when earlier in the novel, it was roaming London streets and frightening jewellers?

In the hurly-burly of Steadman's final battle with the apparition, such weaknesses

might be overlooked, but they are hard to ignore.

Descriptions of this type look back to earlier Gothic writing, notably the wax

effigy in Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and the description of the

rotting body in Poe's 'The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar' (1845). Valdemar, hyp-

notised at the point of death, decays before his observers'eyes when the hypnotist

awakens him from his trance.'The upper lip . . . writhed itself away from the teeth

. . . while the lower jaw fell with an audible jerk, leaving the mouth widely

extended, and disclosing in full view the swollen and blackened tongue.'43 Such

scenes recur in later nineteenth-century fiction, at the climax of Arthur Machen's

'The Novel of the White Powder'(1895) for instance, or in the description of the

mummy in Conan Doyle's 'Lot No.249' (1892):

The features, though horribly discoloured, were perfect,and two little nut-like eyes

still lurked in the depths of the black, hollow sockets. The blotched skin was drawn

tightly from bone to bone, and a tangled wrap of black, coarse hair fell over the ears.

Two thin teeth, like those of a rat, overlay the shrivelled lower lip. In its crouching posi-

tion, with bent joints and craned head, there was a suggestion of energy about the

horrid thing which made Smith's gorge rise. The gaunt ribs, with their parchment-like

covering, were exposed, and the sunken-leaden-hued abdomen, with the long slit

where the embalmer had left his mark; but the lower limbs were wrapped round with

coarse, yellow bandages.44

Although Herbert is slightly more extreme in his use of detail, his techniques are

substantially the same, aiming to generate horror through the creation of physical

disgust. Such moments are far from the memento mori of medieval tradition, and

closer to the effects seen increasingly in contemporary horror cinema. However,

just to emphasise the uneasy blend of old and new Gothic, his description of

Himmler also equates physical degeneracy with spiritual corruption, a favoured

stance in works such as Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) as well as in

countless moral tales outside Gothic territory.

The emphasis on physical revulsion leads the reader to focus on the detail of

Himmler's bodily collapse. This establishes a neatly circular structure for the novel

by echoing his apparent destruction in the prologue, but discourages the more

complex metaphysical or ideological speculation provoked by later Herbert novels

such as Shrine (1983). In the final struggle with Steadman, Himmler has become a

'thing' and a 'demon' (249), a psychic vampire of purportedly terrifying aspect.

Ramsey Campbell suggests that 'because the supernatural is only hinted at in the

course of the novel, the climactic manifestation is the more disturbing', but the

reliance on stock devices weakens the book's finale.45 The historical Himmler was

frightening because he represented a resolutely materialist and secular tyranny, but

at the end of The Spear , this terror is embodied in overly literal ways.The concen-

tration on corporeally-related disgust signals the emergence of the 'body horror'of

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the 1980s, and threatens to weaken the novel's explicitly anti-Nazi stance. Its

process of demonisation is very much in keeping with the monstrous yet alluring

villains of earlier Gothic, but Himmler is scarcely comparable with such creations.

The result is that Herbert's approach backfires, since not only does it relegate

Nazism to the status of simple deviance for which no 'normal' person could possi-

bly have any sympathy, it also homogenises horror. The revivified Himmler is

certainly an abomination, but he could be any abomination from Gothic's imagi-

native vault. Reverting to supernatural explanations to make Nazism frightening

allows Herbert to avoid horrors that are all too real.

'Violence nails you to the page': Conclusion46

Reflecting on the nostalgic appeal of World War II in 1974, Michael Wood argued:

there were proper enemies then .. . none of your invisible IRA, using unforgivable

tactics in a cause you half suspect may be right, but real Germans, monocled, heel-

clicking monsters. The reappearance of these sinister Huns in shows like Colditz has

provoked a certain amount of stir among decent-minded people, but what such

Germans are in such contexts are simply figments of an English dream of an old

glory.47

Thirty years later,Paul Gilroy makes a similar point in suggesting that British cul-

ture remains fascinated by Nazism because German totalitarianism represents 'the

unchanging evil we need to always see ourselves as good'. Unfortunately, as he goes

on to observe, while '[s]tanding firm against Nazis comforts Brits by making them

feel righteous and perennially innocent . . . we drift towards becoming an anxious

nation that can't get away from the Nazis it pluckily vanquished.'48 For Wood and

Gilroy, British, particularly English, reactions to World War II are part of a wider

consideration of the end of empire and the increasing uncertainty of British

national identity. In staging a fresh Anglo-American victory over Nazism, The

Spear was in many ways demonstrating the enduring popularity of fiction that

reasserted national prowess and individual heroism.It has become commonplace

in historically focused criticism to suggest that novelists frequently employ Gothic

tropes as a means of accommodating the anxieties of their time, and Herbert's

novel is a case in point, addressing post-war decline and the rise of extreme right-

wing politics. In such respects, its concerns have remained relevant, with the far

right still gaining support across Europe and the Middle East as volatile as ever.

Sixty years after its apparent overthrow, Nazism remains a topic of unending

interest in Britain with a wide spectrum of books dealing with it each year. The

voices of its victims are heard far more loudly than they were when The Spear was

published, but many works,academic as well as popular, continue to exemplify the

'decadent appetites'that outrage Michael Burleigh. One might have thought that

the unpleasantness surrounding the original publication of The Spear would make

Herbert reluctant to revisit this terrain, but he returned to a version of Nazi Gothic

with 48 in 1996. This time, he combined what John Clute terms the 'Hitler Wins'

James Herbert, The Spear and 'Nazi Gothic' 93

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genre with his favoured hybrid of Gothic and thriller devices in imagining London

devastated by Hitler's biological weapon, the 'blood death', a distant relative of the

plague that scythes down Poe's Prince Prospero.49 The book was another commer-

cial success. Indeed,by 1996, Herbert was the best-selling English horror writer of

the century, with the paperback of 48 claiming his worldwide total sales were in

excess of 38 million books.

Clearly,Nazism continues to fulfil the role of 'other' in certain strands of Gothic

writing, but should it? Is its treatment in novels such as The Spear a defensible

engagement with long-standing cultural anxieties, or an irresponsible flirtation

with horrific reality in the hope of financial reward? Herbert may not glamorise

Nazism, but his denunciations of it are surely compromised both by their execu-

tion and, more importantly, by wider moral reservations concerning his subject

matter.

Notes

1Daily Record (Glasgow) review of The Spear , used on the cover of the novel's paperback

edition (London: New English Library, 1980). All subsequent references are to this

edition. Page references will be given in parentheses in the body of the text.

2 Herbert was born in 1943 and grew up in the civic confusion that characterised the re-

development of the capital. The Jonah (1981) describes children playing on London

bombsites, and he has subsequently described those around St Paul's Cathedral as

having been 'my very own adventure playground'. James Herbert, James Herbert's Dark

Places (London: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 84.

3 Examples of the former include The Hitler Gang (dir. John Farrow, 1944), Hitler's

Madman (dir.Douglas Sirk, 1943) and Hitler's Children (dir. Edward Dmytryk, 1943)

while the latter are typified by Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940) and Will

Hay's The Goose Steps Out (dir. Will Hay & Basil Dearden, 1942).Historians and cul-

tural analysts had watched the rise of Hitler carefully during the 1930s, and there is a

valuable summary of their work in the bibliography of Michael Burleigh's The Third

Reich: A New History (London: Macmillan, 2000).

4 Examples include Paul Brickhill, The Dambusters (1951, filmed 1954),P.R. Reid, The

Colditz Story (1952, filmed 1954), Jerrard Tickell, Odette (1949, filmed 1950), Peter

Fleming, Invasion 1940 (1957).

5 Other fictions of Nazi victory include Len Deighton, SS-GB (1978), Hitler Victorious:

Eleven Stories of the German Victory in World War II, ed. Gregory Benford and Martin

H. Greenberg (1986) and Robert Harris, Fatherland (1992). A sub-genre of such writ-

ing involves the success of neo-Nazi coups in Britain in novels such as Robin Cook, A

State of Denmark (1973), Patrick Long, Heil Britannia (1973) and Guy Walters' alter-

native version of 1930s' history, The Leader (2004). See too the essays by John Keegan

and other historians imagining Nazi victory in Robert Cowley's collection, What If?

(1999). For a wider consideration of the cultural representation of Nazism, see Alvin

H.Rosenfeld, Imagining Hitler (1985).

6 Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History ,pp.3–4.

7 John Walker (ed.), Halliwell's Film and Video Guide, 16th edition (London: Harper-

Collins,2000), pp. 582, 605.

8 Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs, Immoral Tales: Sex and Horror Cinema in Europe,

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1956–1984 (London: Titan, 1995), p. 115;Michael J. Weldon, The Psychotronic Video

Guide (London: Titan, 1996), p. 283.

9 Pauwels and Bergier's book was translated into English in 1963 as The Dawn of Magic

in the UK and Morning of the Magicians in the US. For further details of its sales and

influence see Gary Valentine Lachman, Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the

Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 2001),p. 16.

10 Colin Wilson & Donald Seaman, The Encyclopaedia of Modern Murder 1962–1983

[1983] (London: Pan, 1986),p. 59. The book mistakenly refers to 'Trial at Nuremburg',

but the film was in fact Judgement at Nuremburg (dir. Stanley Kramer, 1961).

11 Jonathan Rigby, English Gothic: A Century of Horror Cinema (London: Reynolds &

Hearn,2000),p.139.

12 Nazi revivals or the continuing activities of wartime Nazis were staples of television

adventure series during the 1970s. Examples include 'The Old, The New and The

Deadly' (The Persuaders , 1971), in which a Field Marshall's baton containing a wire

recording of one of Hitler's speeches is sought by surviving senior Nazis, and 'The

Eagle's Nest' (The New Avengers,1976), in which an eminent surgeon is abducted in

order to treat the still living Adolf Hitler. Comics such as Victor and Battle continued

to fight World War II into the 1980s.

13 Erich Erdstein (with Barbara Bean), Inside the Fourth Reich [1978] (London: Sphere,

1979).

14 Controversy surrounding the extent to which Nazi leaders knew of or encouraged

the Holocaust was intensified by the publication of David Irving's Hitler's War

(1977), which claimed that Hitler was largely ignorant of the workings of the 'Final

Solution'.

15 It should be added that during the Punk era, the wearing of Nazi regalia did not auto-

matically mean that one sympathised with Nazi philosophy,although this obviously

remains a contentious issue. For an intelligent discussion of Punk's complex relation-

ship with Nazi imagery, see Jon Savage, England's Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock

(London: Faber, 1991).

16 'Fascinating Fascism'[1974] in The Susan Sontag Reader (London: Penguin, 1983), p.

325. British writers' interest in German negotiations with the Nazi legacy allowed a

recurrent fascination with National Socialism to be legitimised in the interest of

contemporary cultural or political analysis. See for instances the account of anti-Nazi

student demonstrations in the late 1960s and early 1970s in Gillian Becker's Hitler's

Children (1977) and the trade in Nazi 'antiques' documented in Robert Harris's study

of the Hitler Diaries fraud, Selling Hitler (1986).

17 The National Front had formed as early as 1966, but first came to prominence in the

aftermath of Enoch Powell's racially inflammatory speeches in 1967–68. During the

mid-1970s, it contested parliamentary and municipal elections, although without suc-

cess. It split in 1982, with breakaway members forming the British National Party.

18 Daily Mirror review of The Spear , quoted on the covers of the 1980 paperback edition.

19 David Langford, 'Dennis (Yeats) Wheatley' in John Clute and John Grant (eds), The

Encyclopedia of Fantasy (London: Orbit, 1997), p. 1008.

20 Although Herbert was still using Wheatley's The Devil and All His Works (1971) as a

standard reference work on the occult,Wheatley's knowledge of the area was at best

limited as Gareth J. Medway reveals in Lure of the Sinister: The Unnatural History of

Satanism (2001).

21 See my 'London Kills Me: The British Horror Film and the Modern Metropolis', in

James Herbert, The Spear and 'Nazi Gothic' 95

chap 6 8/9/06 2:23 pm Page 95

Xavier Mendik (ed.), Shocking Cinema of the Seventies (Hereford: Noir Press, 2001),

pp.193–211.

22 Leon Hunt considers NEL's output in British Low Culture: From Safari Suits to Sex-

ploitation (London: Routledge, 1998). British audiences were familiar with the style of

EC through a series of portmanteau horror films of the time, such as Tales from the

Crypt (dir. Freddie Francis, 1972).

23 This led to a 'uniform edition' of Herbert's work, which saw his earlier fiction repack-

aged in hardback form. Herbert designed the new covers for his novels and also wrote

much of his own promotional material. Craig Cabell,'Collecting James Herbert', Book

and Magazine Collector, 128 (November 1994), 23–30.

24 Stephen King, Danse Macabre [1982] (London: Time Warner, 2003),p. 414.

25 Jo Fletcher,'The Curious Case of The Spear ' in Stephen Jones (ed.), James Herbert: By

Horror Haunted (London: NEL, 1992), p. 116.

26 Ibid .pp.120–1.

27 Ibid . pp.116–19. See too the account of the case in Craig Cabell, James Herbert: Devil

in the Dark (London: Metro, 2003) pp. 83–93.

28 Jones (ed.), James Herbert: By Horror Haunted, p.119.

29 Martin Coxhead, 'From Rats to Riches: The Horror Fiction of James Herbert',

Fangoria, 30 (October 1983), 11.

30 The Triad/Panther paperback of SS-GB had an equally striking cover design, an SS

death's head on a red, white and blue ribbon. Bookshop displays that bore large card-

board versions of this insignia were a startling prospect.

31 Fawlty Towers , 'The Germans' (BBC, 1975).

32 Herbert, Danse Macabre , No.8 (January 1986) in Jones (ed.), James Herbert: By Horror

Haunted,p.78.

33 Guy N. Smith's Night of the Crabs (1976) was first marketed by NEL as being 'In the

tradition of The Rats ', and Smith turned out a succession of Herbert copies through-

out the 1970s and 1980s. Following the success of The Rats , British horror writing saw

a spate of animal plague novels by writers such as Richard Lewis, John Halkin, and

Shaun Hutson.

34 In this instance, the novel gained momentum from the Sadat Initiative (November

1977), which seemed to signal an improvement in Jewish-Arab relations. The Israeli

Prime Minister,Menachem Begin, and the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, received

the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978 for their efforts.

35 Douglas Winter, Faces of Fear (New York: Berkley, 1985), p.79. Herbert's own Catholic

upbringing has influenced a number of his later novels, notably Shrine (1983).

36 Robert Miles, 'Europhobia: The Catholic Other in Horace Walpole and Charles

Maturin' in Avril Horner (ed.), European Gothic: A Spirited Exchange (Manchester:

Manchester University Press, 2002), p. 84.

37 Chris Baldick, introduction to Charles Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1989), p.xiii.

38 Alan Clark, Diaries: Into Politics , ed. Ion Trewin (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson,

2000),p.224.

39 Coxhead,'From Rats to Riches', p. 15.

40 The First Pan Book of Horror Stories appeared in 1959, and by the late 1960s the annual

volumes had acquired a reputation for graphic violence. Mike Ashley suggests that 'The

series in effect resurrected horror fiction as a publishing genre'. See 'Pan Book of

Horror Stories' in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy,p. 744.

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41 Jones (ed.), James Herbert: By Horror Haunted,p.21.

42 Bram Stoker,'The Judge's House', in The Oxford Book of Ghost Stories , ed.Michael Cox

and R. A. Gilbert (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1986), p. 122.The story's depiction

of a young man menaced by malignant black rats makes one wonder if it influenced

Herbert's first novel.

43 Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher and other writings, ed. David Galloway

(London: Penguin, 1986), p. 356.

44 Arthur Conan Doyle, Tales of Unease, ed. David Stuart Davies (London: Wordsworth,

2000),pp.172–3.

45 Jones (ed.), James Herbert: By Horror Haunted,p.293.

46 Daily Record review of The Spear , on cover of the 1980 paperback edition.

47 Michael Wood,'You Can't Go Home Again,' [1974] in Paul Barker (ed.), Arts in Society

(London: Fontana, 1977), pp.24–5.

48 Paul Gilroy,'Why Harry's disoriented about empire'. The Guardian, 18 January 2004,

p.20.

49 John Clute,'Hitler Wins', The Encyclopedia of Fantasy,p. 469.

Address for Correspondence

Nick Freeman, Department of English & Drama, Loughborough University, Leicestershire,

LE11 3TU

James Herbert, The Spear and 'Nazi Gothic' 97

chap 6 8/9/06 2:23 pm Page 97

Reproducedwithpermissionofthecopyrightowner.Furtherreproductionprohibitedwithoutpermission.

ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.

• Edgar Allan Poe

The Fall of the House of Usher / Edgar Allan Poe Note: The University of Adelaide Library eBooks @ Adelaide.

Titan, 1995), p. 115 The Psychotronic Video Guide

• J Michael
• Weldon

–1984 (London: Titan, 1995), p. 115; Michael J. Weldon, The Psychotronic Video Guide (London: Titan, 1996), p. 283.

9 Pauwels and Bergier's book was translated into English in 1963 as The Dawn of Magic in the UK and Morning of the Magicians in the US. For further details of its sales and influence see Gary Valentine Lachman, Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the

9 Pauwels and Bergier's book was translated into English in 1963 as The Dawn of Magic in the UK and Morning of the Magicians in the US. For further details of its sales and influence see Gary Valentine Lachman, Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 2001), p. 16.

A Century of Horror Cinema

• Jonathan Rigby
• English Gothic

Jonathan Rigby, English Gothic: A Century of Horror Cinema (London: Reynolds & Hearn, 2000), p. 139.

• Erich Erdstein

Erich Erdstein (with Barbara Bean), Inside the Fourth Reich [1978] (London: Sphere, 1979).

• David Langford
• Dennis

David Langford, 'Dennis (Yeats) Wheatley' in John Clute and John Grant (eds), The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (London: Orbit, 1997), p. 1008.

• Stephen King
• Danse Macabre

24 Stephen King, Danse Macabre [1982] (London: Time Warner, 2003), p. 414.

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