“ Why, once Jakes went out to cover a revolution in one of the Balkan capitals. Take this passage from Scoop about a legendary wire service foreign correspondent named Wenlock Jakes: I say this as somebody who has covered war and mayhem in almost every continent of the planet.

The novel strips away the mystique of the foreign correspondent and reveals many as self-serving egotists who would just as soon start a war as cover one and who believe that the most important thing about any story is the fact they have arrived to cover it. The sub-title of Scoop is, “A Novel About Journalists.” Despite never knowing what exactly is happening around him, and sending dispatches back in Latin to keep competitors from reading his copy, Boot manages to “scoop” the gaggle of famous (or infamous) correspondents who have come to write about a war between barefoot, spear-chucking natives, and the modern, highly mechanized Italian army. Indeed, William Boot’s idea of outstanding journalistic prose is, “Maternal rodents pilot their furry brood through the stubble,” and “Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole”-both lines from his Lush Places column. The powers that be at the Beast get the two Boots mixed up and erroneously dispatch William Boot to the fictional East African country of Ishmaelia where he has no idea what he is doing or how to write anything beyond his nature column. A timid and hapless nature writer for London’s Daily Beast (Daily Mail) named William Boot, who writes a weekly column entitled “Lush Places,” is mistaken for John Boot, a distant cousin and novelist who wants to be sent to Africa to cover an impending war. The book is based partly on Waugh’s own experiences as a green correspondent in Ethiopia where he covered the Italian invasion of that country for the Daily Mail in 1935.Īt its heart, Scoop is a story about mistaken identity. It’s fast, funny, wonderfully written and most of all in an era online journalism, blogs, and social media it still has an undeniable ring of relevance and truth about it even though it was published in 1938. “Scoop” ranks number 60 of the 100 best novels of all time.

If you have never read Evelyn Waugh’s wonderful satire of British journalism entitled “Scoop,” get thee to Amazon or to a bookstore and buy the book.

William boot scoop