William Boot

{{Short description|Fictional protagonist of the Evelyn Waugh novel Scoop}} {{about||the English artist, illustrator and author|William Henry James Boot}} '''William Boot''' is a fictional journalist who is the protagonist in the 1938 Evelyn Waugh comic novel ''Scoop.''

==Character== Boot is the young author of a regular column on country life for a London newspaper named the ''Daily Beast''. His affected style is typified in the notorious sentence "Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole". After the ''Daily Beast's'' publisher mistakes him for the "real" war correspondent John Boot, William is sent abroad as a foreign correspondent to the fictional African state of Ishmaelia which is on the brink of a civil war. Although he is completely inept, he accidentally gets the 'scoop' of the title.

== Inspiration for character ==

It has been suggested that Waugh based the character of William Boot on his own experiences and on the journalist Bill Deedes; the two had reported together in 1936, trying to cover the Second Italo-Abyssinian War and Deedes arrived in Addis Ababa aged 22 with almost 600 pounds of luggage.<ref>W. F. Deedes, ''At War With Waugh'' (London: Macmillan, 2003), p.3.</ref> Deedes himself said he "spent part of my life brushing aside the charge," but admitted "that my inexperience and naivety as a reporter in Africa might have contributed a few bricks to the building of Boot."<ref>W. F. Deedes, ''At War With Waugh'' (London: Macmillan, 2003), pp. 102–103.</ref>

Barring the question of age, a more appropriate model for Boot may be William Beach Thomas who, according to Peter Stothard, "was a quietly successful countryside columnist and literary gent who became a calamitous ''Daily Mail'' war correspondent" in the First World War.<ref>The Times [http://timescolumns.typepad.com/stothard/2007/05/hay_we_got_it_w.html Hay, we got it wrong] 29 May 2007</ref>

Yet another suggested candidate as the model for Boot was the ''Daily Mail'''s gardening correspondent for 50 years, Percy Izzard (1877–1968).<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-ralph-izzard-1563493.html |first=Jan |last=Morris |author-link=Jan Morris |title=Obituary: Ralph Izzard |work=The Independent |date=14 December 1992 |access-date=13 July 2025 }}</ref>

==Television portrayals ==

*Michael Maloney played William Boot in a 1987 British television movie entitled ''Scoop,'' produced by LWT. *Harry Worth played the character in a 1972 BBC television series, which was an adaptation of the novel scripted by Barry Took.

== Use as a pseudonym == Tom Stoppard sometimes went by the pseudonym William Boot.<ref>{{cite web |title=Tom Stoppard quiz: can you solve these hard problems? |url=https://www.theguardian.com/stage/quiz/2015/jan/28/tom-stoppard-playwright-hard-problem-theatre-quiz |website=The Guardian |accessdate=15 November 2020 |date=28 January 2015}}</ref>

==External links== *[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/oct/25/classics.evelynwaugh Guardian analysis]

==References== <references/>

{{DEFAULTSORT:Boot, William}} Category:Evelyn Waugh characters Category:Fictional reporters and correspondents