At War With Waugh: The Real Story of Scoop

by W.F.Deedes (Author)

• Used

  Unabridged
  2004

  $3.44

  History, both political and literary, was made when W. F. Deedes met Evelyn Waugh in 1935. Both were in Abyssinia to cover a war which many in England regarded with bewildered indifference but which profoundly influenced an impending global conflict. Whilst Deedes was principally concerned with filing copy to London, the author of Brideshead Revisited had another agenda and another novel in mind, Scoop.

  As Waugh drank, played poker and observed hacks in seedy hotel bars in Addis Ababa, he focussed on one young reporter. W. F. Deedes has always denied his association with Scoop's Boot, the innocent abroad and nature-notes writer who is accidentally dispatched to a war-zone. However, he acknowledges some similarities - particularly the tonnage of kit he shipped from London.

  Bill Deedes considers that 'little' war and its importance with the hindsight of a further sixty-odd years of impeccably thoughtful reporting from other battlefields, whilst offering unique memories of his difficult contemporary - arguably the finest English novelist of his time. Written with characteristic wit, insight and affection, At War With Waugh is a small classic.

  `A fascinating memoir. . . full of well-observed detail and wonderful throwaway asides' Hugh Massingberd, Daily Telegraph

• Used

  Hardcover
  2003

  $3.30

  One of Evelyn Waugh's most popular novels is Scoop, an exuberant, hilarious comedy of mistaken identity and a brilliant satire on Fleet Street and its relentless and hectic pursuit of hot news set during the Italo-Ethiopian War of 1936. It tells the story of William Boot, a nature journalist mistakenly dispatched to cover a foreign war, and finding himself deep in the middle of danger and political absurdity. Unknown to many, the story is based on the true exploits of one Bill Deedes, upon whom Waugh based Boot, and here for the first time Deedes tells the real story of his adventures in Abyssinia in the 1930s, in his own unique and hilarious way. It is a story of amateurish bungles and almost Pythonesque incongruities. If we look at the memoirs of war correspondents such as John Simpason and Max Hastings, not much as changed in the ensuing years.