To whom it may concern

My esteemed linguistics colleague wonders about the origins of 'Plashing Vole'. I posted it several months ago so it's buried in the archive. Briefly, in Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, William Boot is the hapless nature diary author on The Beast (not The Daily Beast as Tina Brown and - shamefully - the author of the synopsis on the back of the new Penguin Classics edition, seem to think). He is sent to cover an African war because Lord Copper, the proprietor, confuses him with Boot the star reporter. Until then, Boot's breathless literary prose mainly consists of tracking the activities of the vole as it plashes through the fens (correction, quests through the plashy fens: thanks Debbie). He's allegedly based on the legendary Bill Deedes of the Telegraph. 

I chose him because we're both amateur writers who've ended up out of our depth in the media (as anyone who knows my PhD subject) is well aware.