'It's a pathetic bird, a miserable bird, a wretched bird.'

The English are such a profoundly storytelling and literate people. Their, and our, habit of documenting, and then recasting as stories, everything that goes on leads to layers and layers of stories.

An example here from 'Will A Lion Come?' Memories of Evelyn Waugh by Richard Acton, in The Spectator, 19 September, 1992. He recounts an incident when Waugh visited his family which Waugh then worked into one of his masterpieces, Scoop. At least, it is one of my favorites among his works.

In 1936 Waugh was 32, and famous. He had marooned himself in Shropshire to work on a travel book, Waugh in Abyssinia. My parents then lived in Shropshire at Aldenham Park. My father's sister, Mia Woodruff, brought the writer over that April, and Waugh wrote to my mother: 'I absolutely loved my visit.' Soon after that, Waugh came for another weekend. On the Sunday afternoon, my father proposed that they go for a walk. My father was immensely proud of a great crested grebe which nested on our lake — the Shore Pool - and he wanted to show the grebe to Waugh. The latter was violently opposed to the plan. Alcohol had flowed that day and Waugh objected that 'the poisons ought to be allowed to settle'.

My father won, and my parents set off, dragging their reluctant guest with them. Eventually the party got to the Shore Pool and sighted the grebe. Waugh was furious at its inadequacies and gave vent to his feelings: 'It's a pathetic bird, a miserable bird, a wretched bird.'

A few months later Waugh began Scoop, and the grebe became immortal. William Boot, the hero, first appears while he is writing a weekly nature column called 'Lush Places'. William is in despair over an article on badgers. His sister, out of mischief, had substituted 'the great crested grebe' for 'badger' throughout his piece, and William had received indignant complaints from his readers. One nature lover

challenged him categorically to produce a single authenticated case of a great crested grebe attacking young rabbits

— and so William's adventures begin. Sent to Africa to report on the war in Ishmaelia, William is a hopeless war correspondent. As the book reaches its climax, the grebe has become a god. William, in a slough of despond, bows his head:

'Oh, great crested grebe,' he prayed, `maligned fowl, have I not expiated the wrong my sister did you?'

The grebe answers William's prayer, and as a result, William gets the 'scoop' of the title.

But even this mockery of the grebe did not appease Waugh's fury over the infamous walk with my parents. Twenty years later he wrote The Life of Ronald Knox. Contempt for the great crested grebe smoulders in Waugh's pointed description of the Shore Pool, `. . . a lake which has afforded pleasure to ornithologists'.