For seventy-five years, W. F. Deedes has reported on the most important events, affairs and issues that have affected Britain, Europe and the World. Words and Deedes brings together a life's work, selecting the very best of his journalism to give a unique overview of the best part of the last century. Starting as a cub reporter in 1931, Deedes' inimitable eye was cast over the world caught in economic depression and inching closer to another devastating war. Yet, whether describing his campaign to alleviate the hardships of disadvantaged children or the ruthlessness of Mussolini's war machine, Deedes' pieces seem as fresh and vibrant now as they did then. This vivid and immediate style suffuses all his writing, making each story relevant, whether it be recent or more than fifty years old. This remarkable volume charts a course through some of the most turbulent times the world has ever seen, and yet on every page there is something to enlighten, delight or amuse. With this collection, W. F. Deedes cements his place as one of the very finest journalists of this, or any other century.

William Deedes is a national institution. Over the course of a career spanning seventy years, 'dear Bill' has become one of the most respected and admired journalists of the last century. This is his story, told with his characteristic modesty, insight and wit. Cutting his teeth at the Morning Post, Bill Deedes was sent off to cover the Abyssinian war, thereby gaining him a reputation as a fearless war reporter and also inadvertently providing Evelyn Waugh with the inspiration for Scoop's hero, Henry Boot. Kept on after the Telegraph merger, Bill rose through the ranks until he was called into politics, taking his place as a member of Harold Macmillan's Cabinet. Soon however the Telegraph called again and made him editor - a position he held for several years. Today he continues to write for the Telegraph as well as work tirelessly for charity. Now updated and revised, including recent photographs, Dear Bill is an extraordinary memoir which provides a unique and idiosyncratic perspective on matters political and social, British and global, for the greater part of the twentieth century and beyond.

History, both political and literary, was made when W. F. Deedes met Evelyn Waugh in 1935. Both were in Abyssinia to cover a war which many in England regarded with bewildered indifference but which profoundly influenced an impending global conflict. Whilst Deedes was principally concerned with filing copy to London, the author of Brideshead Revisited had another agenda and another novel in mind, Scoop. As Waugh drank, played poker and observed hacks in seedy hotel bars in Addis Ababa, he focussed on one young reporter. W. F. Deedes has always denied his association with Scoop's Boot, the innocent abroad and nature-notes writer who is accidentally dispatched to a war-zone. However, he acknowledges some similarities - particularly the tonnage of kit he shipped from London. Bill Deedes considers that 'little' war and its importance with the hindsight of a further sixty-odd years of impeccably thoughtful reporting from other battlefields, whilst offering unique memories of his difficult contemporary - arguably the finest English novelist of his time. Written with characteristic wit, insight and affection, At War With Waugh is a small classic.

In this eclectic selection of biographical sketches Bill Deedes remembers some of the key figures of the twentieth century. Political heavyweights such as Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and Anthony Eden are reassessed and re-evalued, while record breakers such as Sir Edmund Hillary and Roger Bannister are shown to be far more than just their achievements. Further afield, W. F. Deedes ruminates on the chaotic and shady world of Imelda Marcos, the dignity and determination of anti-apartheid campaigner Helen Suzman and the controversial leadership of Ian Smith in Rhodesia. But there are lighter portraits too. Noel Coward, with his useful advice on trains, Mary Whitehouse's inadvertent demonstration of pornography and Malcolm Muggeridge's half-hearted suicide attempt all feature in this delightful compendium. Like his previous books, Dear Bill and At War With Waugh, Brief Lives is an affectionate, perceptive and anecdotal book, bursting with life, humour and wit.