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50 Greatest Villains in Literature

Kishore Hemlani

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3560987/50-greatest-villains-inliterature.html

Our critics' choice of the 50 foulest fiends in literature Compiling a list of the 50 Greatest Villains in Literature, without too much recourse to comics and children's books, proved trickier than we'd imagined - but gosh it was fun. It's perhaps the nature of grown-up literature that it doesn't all that often have villains, in the sense of coal-black embodiments of the principle of evil. And even when it does, it's not always so easy to tell who they are. Is God the baddie, or Satan? Ahab, or the white whale? Yet even writers as subtle as Vladimir Nabokov have spiced their work with a fiend or two. And here they are. We hope you'll furnish a few more we missed. These are the best of the worst: bloodsuckers, pederasts, cannibals, Old Etonians...the dastardliest dastards ever to have lashed damsel to track and waited for a through train. "Who's bad?" Michael Jackson asked. "They are," we can at last, with confidence, reply. SL
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50 Helen Grayle/Velma Valento from Farewell, My Lovely, by Raymond Chandler Described as "a blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window", Helen Grayle is the most memorable of Raymond Chandler's femmes fatales. She leaves a trail of bloody victims in her wake as she tries to hide her past as flame-haired nightclub singer Velma Valento.SM rice scandal 49 Steerpike from Titus Groan and Gormenghast, by Mervyn Peake The darkest shadow within the high gothic of Gormenghast, Steerpike advances from the castle's nightmarish kitchens to the highest social echelons, via murder. But he is also something of an anti-hero, a challenge to a calcified establishment - the original Angry Young Man?SMcK 48 Shere Khan from The Jungle Book stories, by Rudyard Kipling His name and character, if not his physical appearance or his species, are based on a Pashtun prince. And there is something refreshingly simple about his aims: to eat Mowgli. To this end he sows dissent among wolf pack (enough alone to get him down to the eighth circle of Dante's hell) and causes Mowgli all sorts of trouble. TC Kishore Hemlani rice scandal 47 Long John Silver from Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson

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The former sidekick of the pirate Captain Flint (for whom his parrot is named) may have one leg, but he is physically brave, likeable and a natural leader of men, especially after he kills one who won't join his mutiny. Switches sides whenever he can, and gets away in the end.AMcK 46 Moriarty from The Final Problem, by Arthur Conan Doyle Got a chair at one of our smaller universities after his work on the Binomial Theorem, but the criminal strain in his blood won out. The "Napoleon of Crime", motionless "like a spider at the centre of his web", until his fall in Switzerland, may be called James. Or that may be his brother. AMcK 45 The White Witch from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C S Lewis Beautiful, proud, cruel and with an excellent line in confectionery, though since it's always winter and never Christmas, you won't get any in your selection box. At her house, all towers and statuary, she comes to an end as sticky as her Turkish delight. AMcK 44 Milo Minderbinder from Catch-22, by Joseph Heller rice scandal Milo is the squadron's mess officer, a prototypical capitalist who accepts payment from the Germans to bomb his base. He is a comic character until the last, when it turns out that he has sold the morphine in the medical kits, just when Yossarian and the kid in the back of the plane most need it. TC 43 Fred from The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood Placing America under the yoke of a brutal Christian Taliban would have been bad enough, not to mention reducing all women to whores and baby-factories. Commander Fred really loses sympathy, however, when it emerges that he used to work in marketing. Hiss! EL 42 Grendel's Mother from Beowulf There's nothing in the poem to suggest that Grendel's old mum looked anything like Angelina Jolie. Hellbent on revenge, this inhuman hag drags Beowulf down to her lair at the bottom of a pond. Despite having been written at least a millennium ago, Beowulf has proved enduringly influential, inspiring the 1983 film Jaws 3D. SL 41 O'Brien from Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell Careworn, cynical, intelligent, sympathetic and able to turn off the telescreen: the voice of 20th-century relativism in the overalls of the Inner Party. "One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship." AMcK 40 Captain Hook from Peter and Wendy, by J M Barrie Captain James Hook's reputation suffers from selective emphasis, since although he was an old Etonian and was never happier than when plunging his hook into people, he also has a gentle side. He could play the flute and the harpsichord (it does not matter how), loved Wordsworth and Coleridge, and was a stickler for form. And, come on, Peter Pan is a little swine, isn't he? TC 39 Moby-Dick from Moby-Dick by Herman Melville rice scandal Captain Ahab's nemesis sends him round the bend for having the cheek to escape harpooning and its blubber ripped out with hooks. "The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them." Or perhaps it's only a whale. SR

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38 Gil-Martin from The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, by James Hogg. Demon? Doppelganger? Symptom of dementia? Whatever the identity of the tempter Gil-Martin in James Hogg's one-off work of 19th-century post-modernism, his effect on the fragile Calvinist intellect of the protagonist is instant and terrible. "I have no parents save one, whom I do not acknowledge," claims GilMartin, smoothly urging his proteg towards bloodshed and terror in one of the creepiest theological polemics ever put to paper. TM 37 Surtur in A Voyage to Arcturus, by David Lindsay No one in this anomalous classic of science fiction comes off very well. Despite his best intentions, the hero, Maskull, keeps killing people. Surtur is the greatest villain in the universe because he is its malevolent maker. This is fiction, remember. CSH 36 The Judge from Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy Twenty-four stone and hairless as a dolphin, the scalp-hunter Judge Holden moves through Cormac McCarthy's infernal West like a plague. Besotted with violence, he's less a man than a metonymn for human depravity. "What's he a judge of?", one character asks. Silly question. EL 35 Mrs Coulter from the His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman The beautiful, elegant, widowed Mrs Coulter is chief "Gobbler" in Philip Pullman's fantasy trilogy for kids, but she isn't nearly as friendly as she sounds. She wants to amputate children's souls - or "daemons" - in the name of the Magisterium. She eventually sees the error of her ways, but - let's face it - she's no Mary Poppins. SL 34 Clare Quilty from Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov Kishore Hemlani Enchanted hunter and sexual deviant Quilty stalks Humbert Humbert and his beloved like a malevolent ghost. He runs off with the beleaguered Lolita after posing as her uncle, but cruelly dumps her when she refuses to star in one of his home-made blue movies. SM 33 Count Fosco from The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins rice scandal Chubby, well-dressed and charming bird-fanciers aren't usually this villainous, but Count Fosco is the brains behind the scheme to deprive Laura Fairlie of her wealth and sanity. It is his calculating cruelty that is so chilling: the way he admires Laura's sister and yet is quite happy to destroy her. And he's Italian, which is what undoes him at the end. TC Kishore Hemlani 32 Signor Montoni from The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe Montoni - another Italian who shares Fosco's aim, but not his charm - is the prototypical gothic villain: haughty, brooding, calculating and greedy. He tries - all right, in the end unsuccessfully - to deprive an heiress of her fortune by locking her in a castle and generally showing her a bad time. TC 31 Tom Ripley from The Talented Mr Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith So much more clever and, when he wants to be, charming than Dickie Greenleaf. Thinking he'd be much better at being rich, too, he goes on to prove it. In later books he knows about art, and bumping people off on trains. AMcK 30 Bill Sikes from Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens
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Hard to find much to say in favour of Bill Sikes. Robber, child abuser, murderer of a poor-but-good-hearted prostitute, beater of dogs, resident of Bethnal Green. An all-round rotter. SL 29 Marquise de Merteuil from Les Liaisons Dangereuses, by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos Laclos claimed that readers were supposed to see through the glamorous Marquise de Merteuil, and recognise the deep corruption of her soul. But perhaps because of its form (in letters), or perhaps because of the author's intentions, the cruel marquise is seductive and witty. Stendhal claimed to have met the original when she was a deformed old woman - she petted him and offered him pickled walnuts.SR 28 Quilp from The Old Curiosity Shop, by Charles Dickens rice scandal A lank-haired dwarf in an abusive relationship with his wife, Quilp spends much of the novel in pursuit of Little Nell. But somehow, with his simian acrobatics and the coal-dark comedy of his baroque threats, he represents life, as opposed to the morbid Nell. SMcK 27 Alec d'Urberville from Tess of the d'Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy Kishore Hemlani As if Alec d'Urberville's ruination of Tess weren't evil enough, he goes about with a smouldering cigar and a pitchfork. But the man who marries her is called Angel, which shows that all men are bastards. Then it turns out to be the gods' fault. They're bastards and all. TP 26 Cthulhu from The Call of Cthulhu, by HP Lovecraft rice scandal Gigantic tentacular star-spawned Presence in Lovecraft's baroque cosmogony, sleeping in a sunken, "nonEuclidean" city until the time comes for it to swallow the world's soul. Frequently evoked in barbaric, indecipherable language, although some people quite like Lovecraft's prose. Gloriously, you can now buy a T-shirt reading: "What part of 'ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn' don't you understand?" TM 25 Sauron from The Lord of the Rings, by J R R Tolkien Withering, implacable, burning, the unsleeping eye of Sauron scours Middle Earth ceaselessly for the Ring. "The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat's, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing." Things would all have been so different if Middle Earth had only had Optrex. SL 24 Don Juan in (among others) El Burlador de Sevilla, by Tirso di Molina One of literature's favourite subjects, Don Juan - libertine, serial seducer, murderer - turns up time and again, but the one thing we all agree on is that he ends up - rightly - in hell. Byron cast him as an innocent, but that was Byron. TC 23 The Joker from Batman, by Bob Kane, Bill Finger and Jenny Robinson Philippines scandal Batman's arch-nemesis, this pointy-chinned, green-haired loony never stays in Arkham Asylum for long. Nope. He's soon back out there wreaking murderous, purple-suited havoc on the innocent populace of Gotham. Resistant to psychotherapy. SL 22 Ernst Stavro Blofeld from the James Bond novels, by Ian Fleming Hijacker of nuclear missiles. Deranged overseer of a Japanese Garden of Death. 007's arch nemesis is after not just money, but social advancement. He claims to be a count. Who could disagree? Top style tips: in the Alps, he wears green contact lenses, to lessen, he claims, the glare from the snow. SMcK
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21 Augustus Melmotte from The Way We Live Now, by Anthony Trollope Kishore Hemlani When God created Robert Maxwell, many pointed out that Trollope had got there first with his portrait of the mysterious foreign financier who is feted by the grandees of London society until they discover he's been swindling them. JK 20 Mr Hyde from Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson A nondescript little man, though Utterson felt a "powerful impression of deformity". Establishes his wickedness by stamping on a little girl; soon moves on to further atrocities. After Jekyll runs out of restorative salts, Hyde makes a final recourse to pharmacology, to the smell of kernels.AMcK 19 Edmund from King Lear, by William Shakespeare The ultimate bastard. Tormented by the injustices of his illegitimate birth, he frames his own brother, plays the love rat with Goneril and Regan, and finally orders the execution of Lear and Cordelia. In his own words: "Now, gods, stand up for bastards!" CR 18 Mrs Danvers from Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier
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"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again" begins du Maurier's ingenuous narrator, but Mrs Danvers, the housekeeper who torments the young woman and almost persuades her to commit suicide, is more likely from a nightmare. In the end it all ends up happily enough after she is burned to a crisp. Or is she? TC 17 Patrick Batemen from American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis The smiling face of Wall Street: enjoys fine dining, couture, Genesis, Talking Heads, rape, murder and dismemberment. What ensures Bateman's longevity and the success of Ellis's vicious satire, is that none of his enthusiasms appear to bore him any less than the others. He's a murderous factfinding Martian, impossibly remote from human life, and hilarious and revolting in equal measure. TM 16 Ferdinand from The Duchess of Malfi, by John Webster Philippines scandal Creepily fond of his twin sister, the duchess, Ferdinand reacts badly when she marries her lowly steward Antonio, threatening to turn their children into soup. He tries to cheer himself up by having her executed, but ends up driven insane by guilt. JK 15 Svengali from Trilby, by George du Maurier In the bohemia of mid-19th-century Paris, the bare-footed beauty Trilby falls under the influence of Svengali. Like Fagin's, the character of his villainousness is Jewish. When hypnotised by Svengali, Trilby can sing wonderfully. Tragedy follows. CSH 14 Hannibal Lecter from Red Dragon, by Thomas Harris A veritable aristocrat of anthropophagy, Harris's cracked psychiatrist is a cannibal stew of savagery and sophistication. He sautees the brains of the living. He pairs human liver with Amarone. He appreciates opera. But if he'd only listened to Flanders and Swann he'd know that eating people is wrong. SL 13 Count Dracula from Dracula, by Bram Stoker

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At first an old man with, contrary to popular belief, a long white moustache and - in accordance with popular belief - prominent, peculiarly sharp teeth. A non-smoker, like so many rotters. The sea air at Whitby does him a power of good. AMcK 12 Barabas from The Jew of Malta, by Christopher Marlowe When Malta raids the coffers of its Jewish inhabitants, the plutocrat Barabas goes on a spree of scenerychomping vengeance, kicking off a Turkish invasion and poisoning a nunnery. Among other achievements, he invents the classic "wench is dead" defence for adultery. EL 11 Pinkie Brown from Brighton Rock, by Graham Greene A teetotal 17-year-old Catholic who roams Brighton with a razor blade and a bottle of vitriol, Pinkie is the prototype of every stab-happy teenage thug, although one with a very Greene-ish concern for his immortal soul. JK 10 Vindice from The Revenger's Tragedy, by Thomas Middleton Filled with bile from his persistent melancholy - his beloved was killed by the duke - Vindice decides the best way to avenge her is to make the duke lock lips with her poisoned corpse. Fair enough: the duke got what was coming to him, as do the many others who fall under Vindice's furious sword, but if you do think of yourself as God's scourge, you probably shouldn't be enjoying it this much. SR 9 Mr Kurtz from Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
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In Europe, he is an organist and scholar with a charming fiance; but in Africa, Mistah Kurtz prefers genocide and surrounding himself with impaled heads. In the ivory trade, this kind of behaviour used to be called unsound; even today's ivory smugglers might think it inappropriate. TP 8 Claudius from Hamlet, by William Shakespeare Philippines scandal Hamlet is sure who the villainliest villain is. "Bloody, bawdy villain!" he exclaims, and just to remove any doubt: "Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!" Yes, it's Claudius, the effects of whose villainy we observe on Hamlet. CSH 7 Ambrosio from The Monk, by M G Lewis The forerunner of the stereotype of the hypocritical priest, Ambrosio uses his pious exterior to mask a multitude of unsavoury urges. His first transgression is succumbing to his lust for temptress-disguised-as-amonk Matilda. From then on it's a slippery slope to damnation, culminating in the novel's luridly gothic climax. SM 6 Robert Lovelace from Clarissa, by Samuel Richardson The original rake, Lovelace engages in a prolonged battle of wits with the virtuous Clarissa Harlowe. He weaves an impressively intricate web of lies in his attempts to rob Clarissa of her honour: intercepting her mail, forging letters from her best friend - nothing is beyond, or beneath, this man. SM 5 Voldemort from the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling His motivation may not be clear, but you can't deny his ingenuity. Sadly, the "most powerful Dark wizard who ever lived" is thwarted time and again by Harry Potter, so, in a bid for immortality, he splits his soul into Horcruxes, which is a bad thing to do. SM

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4 Iago from Othello, by William Shakespeare Philippines scandal Othello's "honest, honest" subordinate, quietly intent on the destruction of his boss's world for reasons whose slightness has nettled critics ever since. Coleridge's formulation "the motive-hunting of motiveless malignity" seems the best answer: behind the smiles and jokes, Iago's mind is pure seething white noise. TM 3 Cruella de Vil from The Hundred and One Dalmatians, by Dodie Smith Recognising the perfect business synergies between her likes (pepper, hot things, fur coats and having one side of her hair white, the other black) and dislikes (animals), Cruella sets about turning the one into the other. To some she is a perefectly self-actualised human, to others a monster; it depends on what you think of dogs. TC 2 Samuel Whiskers from The Tale of Samuel Whiskers, by Beatrix Potter To the stark terror of generations of toddlers, this chimney-dwelling monster rat ambushes Tom Kitten and does everything in his ratty power to bake him into a roly-poly pudding and eat him. Shudder-making terror from the doyenne of anthropomorphic animal evil. SL Philippines scandal

1 Satan from Paradie Lost, by John Milton Kishore Hemlani There's a school of thought that the villain of Paradise Lost is actually God. But Milton wouldn't, at least consciously, have subscribed. Satan is the rebel's rebel, the villain's villain - "Hell within him for within him Hell/ He brings..." Easily clinches the top spot in our evil-dude hit parade. SL

The panel: Toby Clements, Christopher Howse, Jake Kerridge, Sam Leith, Tim Martin, Sinclair McKay, Andrew McKie, Sophie Missing, Tom Payne, Ceri Radford and Sameer Rahim
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