A recent Guardian article about Ethiopian jazz includes the announcement that the Taitu Hotel in Addis Ababa, described by Waugh in his writings as the favored venue of the press corps and damaged by fire last year, will reopen later this year:
A dark, dank jazz den attached to the Hotel Taitu playing gigs seven nights a week, Jazzamba is currently closed due to a fire last year but is expected to reopen later in 2016…For food, fill up on any of a variety of Wat (spiced stews) served on the much-revered injera (sourdough pancake) at the cheap and cheerful Taitu Hotel – Addis’s oldest, and the setting of Evelyn Waugh’s novel Scoop.
As noted in an earlier post (12 January 2015) relating to the fire, “this was the hotel where the press corps stayed in great discomfort, four to a room. It was thinly disguised as the ‘Splendide’ in Waugh in Abyssinia and inspired the Hotel Liberty in Scoop. This was not, however, … where Waugh himself stayed while covering the war for the Daily Mail. As explained in William Deedes’ 2003 memoir, At War With Waugh (pp. 24-25), Waugh chose to stay in a less crowded billet. When Deedes arrived in Addis in 1935 to cover the looming war for the Morning Post, Waugh suggested that Deedes join him there. This was the Deutches Haus, called in Waugh’s novel “Pension Dressler.”
The Guardian’s article includes a photo of the Taitu Hotel looking in pretty good nick, but it doesn’t say when it was taken.
