Details DowntrackedWhile covering the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, Evelyn Waugh received a cable from his editor: "Send two hundred words upblown nurse." (Telegraph charges were assessed on a per-word basis.)
Waugh, after an exhaustive investigation, determined that rumors of a certain English nurse having been killed in an Italian air raid were in fact bogus. Accordingly, he cabled an explanation to his editor: "Nurse unupblown."
Waugh, Evelyn (1903-1966) British novelist [noted for such works as the social satires Decline and Fall (1928) and Vile Bodies(1930), such stories and novels as Brideshead Revisited (1945), and his wartime trilogy: Men At Arms (1952), Officers and Gentlemen (1955), and Unconditional Surrender (1961)]
[Sources: R. Claiborne, Our Marvellous Native Tongue]More Evelyn Waugh anecdotesRelated Anecdote Keywords:
Wordplay Language Explanations Journalism Reporting Witty Replies Investigations Efficiency Ingenuity Mockery Parsimony
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