Recommendations from our site
“I think it is the best description of a foreign correspondent’s career, and I doubt it will ever be bettered. It’s still very relevant to this rather ridiculous life. When I was covering the early days of the Congo, a group of us were there, maybe five or six correspondents, and somebody had a battered copy of Scoop that we passed around. It just read straight – the life we were living was hardly exaggerated.” Read more...
Richard Beeston, Foreign Correspondent
“Everything about this book is perfect, from the prose to the characters to the Swiss-clock workings of the plot.” Read more...
Andy Borowitz recommends the best Comic Writing
Andy Borowitz, Comedians & Humorist
“The older I got and the more wars I covered – I have done about 18 – the more true it became. Everything is there.” Read more...
The best books on Reportage and War
Martin Bell, Foreign Correspondent
“I re-read it recently and was struck by how unchanged Fleet Street is, 80 years after it was written.” Read more...
Toby Young, Journalist
“Everybody remembers Fleet Street and journalism and Lord Copper and The Daily Beast but the novel is about a classic, almost Shakespearean, case of mistaken identity.” Read more...
William Boyd on Writers Who Inspired Him
William Boyd, Novelist
“Journalists would pride themselves on their amateurism, and Scoop shoves that back at them in spades.” Read more...
Robert Cottrell, Journalist
“Before I worked for the Daily Express I thought Scoop was a marvellous work of fiction. Then I found it wasn’t that far from the truth. Before I worked for the Daily Express I thought Scoop was a marvellous work of fiction. Then I found it wasn’t that far from the truth. They do make various mistakes like employing the wrong person. It was actually before I moved to Fleet Street, when I was on the Scottish Daily Express. There was this industrial reporter on the Daily Mirror and the Daily Express was desperate to get him. So they took this chap out and they wined and they dined him – and they gave him a good salary and signed his contract to the end of time. But then they looked up one day and he was just sitting at his desk, staring into space. And they said, ‘Come on – give us that great industrial stuff you gave the Mirror!’ And he said, ‘Oh that’s not me, it’s so and so – we just happen to have the same name.’ So the fact that William Boot, the man who writes the nature note, ends up as a war correspondent is very amusing to me.” Read more...
Mysteries and Other Favourite Books
M C Beaton, Thriller and Crime Writer
