Callie White honours interviewee Simon Hattenstone with this week’s selection of journalism classics.

 

1. Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

Perhaps the most famous of all fictional journalists, William Boot is here employed by the national newspaper the Daily Beast – his incompetence as foreign correspondence righted, temporarily, by a grand but accidental ‘scoop’.

 

2. Any Human Heart by William Boyd

Logan Mountstuart spends life as an author, war correspondant and elderly journalist of a radically-socialist mag  in this jewel of a book that spans the whole of Mountstuart’s life and, incidentally, the entire nineteenth century.

 

3. The Adventures of Tintin by Hergé

Much-loved Belgian reporter Tintin and his faithful fox-terrier Snowy embark on a series of swashbuckling adventures in these wonderfully illustrated tales of comic-book mystery.

 

4. Towards The End Of The Morning by Michael Frayn

This love-letter to the lost days of Fleet Street is an amusing, satirical work of British journos working on dull, miscellaneous stories, dreaming of television appearances, drinking a lot, and passing out on their desks.

 

5. Arguably by Christopher Hitchens

Renowned editor and famed journalist, Hitchens really knew how to argue. His mind remains unrivalled and this is a fascinating account of a brilliant man’s thoughts.