Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

The supreme Fleet Street novel. ...more info on wikipedia

About the artist: Matt Ashtonfrom the UK

Matt Ashton is a freelance illustrator based in London. He has just finished a short children’s book called Space Cat and is currently working on another couple of graphic stories. He loves drawing people and buildings and will try to find an excuse to put a cat in most of his illustrations.

Why this work

“I chose to illustrate Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop as it’s such a great comic novel. The closest we get to a likeable character is the protagonist, William Boot, an unfortunate and shy nature journalist who accidentally gets sent (with far too much luggage) to a far-flung African country to cover a civil war by his newspaper, The Daily Beast. The writing is florid and the humour dry but it illustrates beautifully the absurd characters that had (and still have) their noses in English newspapers. In the end he gets his scoop and the chance to return to writing about his beloved Great Crested Grebes. William is naïve and way out of his depth and so I tried to make him as boyish and defeated as possible, the un-Indiana Jones. The least adventurous adventure story ever.”