Nice folk do not always do well in Waugh’s comedies, and William Boot is one of the nicest characters we have met. Now seasoned Waugh readers, we rather feared for William. Lord Copper, the Beast’s proprietor, had intended to employ William’s cousin- the ambitious novelist John Boot – but his foreign editor sends the wrong man.
Scoop begins with a case of mistaken identity as Boot, who writes a gentle column on country life for the Daily Beast, is suddenly uprooted and sent to cover a civil war in the fictional African nation of Ishmaelia. Waugh was in fact something of a pariah amongst his fellow journos, and enjoyed none of the (wholly accidental) success of his affable protagonist William Boot. The book is drawn from Waugh’s own experiences as a journalist in Abyssinia, but far more lighthearted. How can a book be so current and so dated at the same time? This was at the forefront of our minds as we met to discuss Waugh’s 1938 parody of Fleet Street and the world of foreign correspondents.
Image of rare Scoop copy, courtesy M Sutcliffe
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