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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Scoop
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(1938) Novel by Evelyn *Waugh about Fleet Street which has become the classic of its kind and has introduced to the language Lord Copper, proprietor of the Beast. He stands, somewhat like *Beaverbrook, for 'self-sufficiency at home, self-assertion abroad'. Mr Salter, the foreign editor, has developed a safe response to any totally inaccurate assertion by his employer; 'Up to a point, Lord Copper' he murmurs in reply. The comedy, of journalists competing to scoop each other in Africa, begins with mistaken identity. Julia Stitch has persuaded Lord Copper to send her young protégé, John Boot, to cover a local war. Copper tells Salter to fix it, but he mistakenly employs William Boot, nature correspondent on the Beast. William's style is typified in the immortal sentence, 'Feather-footed through the plashy fens passes the questing vole'.
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