Wheatley's Letter

 Dennis Wheatley (born on this day in 1897)was a phenomenally successful and prolific novelist, one of the world's best-selling writers from the 1930s through to the 1960s – after which his star sank swiftly below the horizon. He specialised in thrillers with occult themes, of which The Devil Rides Out is perhaps the only one anyone has heard of now (and maybe The Haunting of Toby Jugg). His books were still everywhere when I was a boy; I vaguely remember trying to read one and finding it unreadable. A staunch conservative, to put it mildly, Wheatley wrote in 1947, by hand, 'A Letter to Posterity', which he sealed in a bottle and buried in the foundations of his country house, Grove Place, in Hampshire. He envisaged it lying undiscovered for generations, waiting to be found and recognised as a startlingly prescient warning of things to come. But events didn't quite work out that way: after Wheatley sold Grove Place, it was demolished and, in the process, the Letter to Posterity was discovered, a mere 22 years after it had been buried. 
  Wheatley wrote the Letter on the day of Princess Elizabeth's wedding to Philip Mountbatten, pointing out, rather unnecessarily, that Elizabeth was the heir apparent, therefore in line to become Queen Elizabeth II. 'Yet,' Wheatley continues, 'our present monarch being just over 50 and in good health with a normal prospect of another 25 years of life, many people would lay heavy odds against his daughter, or any other member of his family, ever being crowned at Westminster.' So much for Wheatley's prescience (the King was dead and Elizabeth on the throne within five years). But his main purpose in writing the Letter was to warn of the consequences of socialism, a creed he heartily loathed. A Labour government was in power, and Wheatley felt that the threat of communism was growing, and that a future of subjection to leftist totalitarianism was on its way, aided by political control of the mass media. He predicted the abolition of the monarchy, national bankruptcy, and an altogether deplorable state of affairs in which all were subject to socialist planning, the 'lazy' working class were 'pampered', and the enterprising few obliged to devote their lives to making things easy for the rest. He was even appalled at the prospect of the school leaving age being raised to 16, and a five-day working week being introduced in many industries. It is perhaps just as well he's not around to see what's going on today...