Journalism: Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia in 1935, an ambitious attempt to bring the benefits of modernity to Africa's oldest civilisation, was a costly affair for Italy, losing it much goodwill among the international community and the lives of up to 15,000 of its soldiers, although two-thirds, it must be said, were only native auxiliaries, writes Enda O'Doherty.
It was also not without cost for the Abyssinians who, attacking the invaders with spears and antique muskets, had to be pacified with tanks, poison gas and saturation aerial bombing; 160,000 is a conservative estimate of their dead, including at least 3,000 massacred in Addis Ababa in February 1937 and 1,469 summarily executed by late March in reprisal for an attempt on the life of Marshal Graziani.
An ideal setting then for a comic novel, and Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, written on the back of his experiences as special war correspondent for the Daily Mail, is one of his most enduringly popular. Waugh was delighted to represent the Mail, the only London paper, he said, which was "taking a sane view of the situation", that is supporting the Italians. As it turned out, he didn't actually see much war, being kept "embedded" in Addis with the rest of the foreign press corps while the action, such as it was at this early stage, took place elsewhere. After four months, he returned home, stopping off on the way in Rome where he obtained a private audience with the Duce ("very impressive") and warned him of the hardships his army would surely encounter in such a savage place.
Abyssinia in Scoop becomes the Republic of Ishmaelia, and Addis, its capital, is Jacksonburg, so named after the republic's hereditary ruling family. Waugh had some years previously been received into the Catholic church but evidently remained unimpressed by Abyssinia/Ishmaelia's ancient religious traditions: "the better sort of Ishmaelites have been Christian for many centuries and will not publicly eat human flesh, uncooked, in Lent". The native population - routinely referred to as "darkies" or "coons" - is portrayed in standard colonialist terms as ignorant, childlike and venal, in an "amusing" way of course, though behind the amusement there is a quite genuine physical distaste for the differently pigmented.
William Deedes was sent as a very young reporter to cover the Abyssinian war for the now defunct Morning Post. There he worked closely with Waugh and the gaggle of foreign correspondents who are his chief satirical target in Scoop. Waugh did not much admire the press: "The journalists are lousy competitive hysterical lying (sic)," he wrote. Deedes, who later rose to the editorship of the Daily Telegraph and is an all-round decent chap, cannot agree and strenuously defends his colleagues' professionalism. He also tries hard to be fair to Waugh, though it is obvious he didn't like him or his racism: the word "bounder" is not actually employed but lurks accusingly between the lines. Waugh's biographer, Christopher Sykes, incidentally, claims he did brilliant work in Abyssinia, which was messed up by "a prodigiously incompetent sub-editor" - a familiar charge.
Deedes is also concerned to deny he was the model for William Boot, Scoop's wonderful ingenu hero who is sent to Ishmaelia by mistake and whose real talents lie in lush nature writing: "Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole". Bill Deedes celebrates his ninetieth birthday this year and his footnote to Waugh marks the occasion in a happy and engaging way. One must however conclude that just as the hacks' telegraphic accounts of the Ishmaelian war much improved on the reality, "the real story of Scoop" remains inevitably a somewhat prosaic shadow of the spry, elegant and outrageous fiction.
Enda O'Doherty is an Irish Times journalist
At War With Waugh: The Real Story of Scoop. By W.F. Deedes, Macmillan, 134pp. £12.99