Here comes my mini-lecture on anachronism, and racism in fiction: if a novel was written before the age of political correctness, which means the 1980s, we have to ignore words and sentiments that we categorise as racist today, and that includes the names given to black people. It’s a story of decent values triumphing over the false gods of media megalomania and dishonesty, and the pursuit of truth as opposed to the invention of false news.īut set beside these admirable, up-beat, positive values, there is the inescapable fact that Waugh wrote about people who were not white, or western European, in a way that we cannot tolerate in writers of today. And as I enjoy a novel so much more when the lead protagonist is not made to have a ghastly time, I really enjoy Scoop. Had Scoop been written 15 years later, Boot would have suffered far more than he gets away with in the relatively innocent and optimistic 1930s. In Scoop, his hero, William Boot, is a thoroughly admirable and decent chap, and nothing bad happens to him. This jaundiced view of life, and humanity, is easier to enjoy when it is still relatively positive.

Before the war, Waugh was less bitter, and less despondent, and more fun, while still being terminally exasperated with the stupidity of almost everyone. The practices of gathering news, and what you did with it, also changed, which is what the pointedly satirical Scoop is all about. Evelyn Waugh is a byword in English literature for being rude and offensive, and as the author of the utterly nostalgic Brideshead Revisited, and of the Sword of Honour trilogy, which is so bitter about the experience of trying to be a soldier in the Second World War that reading it can be a very depressing experience. Scoop is also a member of The 1938 Club, a week of book reviews and blog posts about the reading of 1938, that’s taking place between 11 and 17 April 2016.īritish journalism changed radically at the beginning of the 20 th century, with an increasing population growing in literacy and demanding more and more newspapers to read.

This special podcast scripts recap from Why I Really like This Book, is on Scoop, Evelyn Waugh’s magnificent satire about newspaper journalism.

Evelyn waugh 1938