It has been suggested that Waugh based the character of William Boot on his own experiences and on the legendary 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.
•
Yet another suggested candidate as the model for Boot was the Daily Mails gardening correspondent for 50 years, Percy Izzard (1877-1968).
•
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 World War I.
William Shakespeare | William Laud | William Blake | William | William III of England | William Morris | William McKinley | William Howard Taft | William Ewart Gladstone | William the Conqueror | William S. Burroughs | William Shatner | William Faulkner | William Randolph Hearst | William Wordsworth | William Tecumseh Sherman | William Hogarth | Prince William, Duke of Cambridge | William Penn | William Jennings Bryan | William Gibson | William Wilberforce | William James | William Makepeace Thackeray | Fort William | William Hanna | William Hague | William III | William Hurt | William Walton |