The Remarkable Lives of Bill Deedes

by StephenRobinson (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2008

  $3.25

  In a career that spanned seven decades, WF Deedes proved more than 'pretty good' in a spectacular range of professions. A confident and ambitious journalist at twenty-two, Deedes began a life-long relationship with the Daily Telegraph when reporting from Abyssinia alongside Evelyn Waugh in the 1930s. He served as an officer during the Second World War and was awarded the Military Cross for his heroism. After the war he became an MP and a Cabinet Minister and was made a life peer by Margaret Thatcher in 1986. Deedes has met every Prime Minister since Ramsay Mac Donald and has given advice to both John Major and Tony Blair. As journalism's most enduring by-line, Bill Deedes continued to work even after his retirement and was only kept from reporting in Iraq by an essential medical procedure. He published his final article in the Telegraph on 3 August 2007. He died two weeks later. Deedes consented to this authorized biography on the understanding that it would be published only after his death. Thus, this is a franker and fuller account of Deedes' life than that put across in his own memoirs.

• Used

  Paperback
  2009

  $4.20

  Drawing on a rich selection of private papers and hours of interviews with Deedes and his contemporaries, Stephen Robinson charts brilliantly the depths and shallows of the life of the man who inspired Evelyn Waugh's hapless reporter William Boot in Scoop and was the recipient of Private Eye's famous Dear Bill letters. Deedes was also a husband and father of five and Robinson explores the rumour and reality with equal measure to reveal the true character of one of the most extraordinary men to have graced the pages of the British national press.