It is ironic that the objects of Waugh's harshest satire became his most devoted fans. Journalists still love Scoop. The Bright Young Things adored the hugely successful Vile Bodies, which was published in January 1930, and reached its eleventh impression by October. By then Waugh was on his way to Abyssinia, to report the coronation of Haile Selassie for The Times.

Waugh first heard of Abyssinia at an Irish house-party where a guest described meeting two of the Abyssinian crown princes at an embassy lunch in Cairo. Both attended in silk capes and bowler hats, which they refused to remove during the meal. They spoke no language known to the embassy interpreters (D 329). Research in the country-house library intensified Waugh's curiosity. ‘We looked up the royal family in the Almanack de Gotha and traced their descent from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba,’ he recalls. ‘We found a history which began: ‘‘the first certain knowledge we have of Ethiopian history was when Cush the son of – ascended the throne immediately after the Deluge’’. […] The real heir to the throne was hidden in the mountains, fettered with chains of solid gold.’1 Electrified, Waugh engineered a meeting with Jack Driberg, a respectable member of the Colonial Service, known to speak eleven African languages and to have eaten human flesh twice – a clear if distant progenitor of the disreputable Basil Seal, Black Mischief ‘s anthropophagous, polyglot anti-hero. A chance encounter on a train brought Waugh the commission he needed, and within weeks he was on the long journey to Addis Ababa. Alice in Wonderland was still in his mind when he searched in vain for a historical parallel to life in Addis Ababa:

In the 1962 Preface to Black Mischief Waugh denies ‘the smallest resemblance’ between its hero, Seth, Emperor of Azania, and Haile Selassie.