Malcolm Muggeridge
Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge (24 March 1903 – 14 November 1990)[1][2] was an English journalist and satirist. His father, H. T. Muggeridge, was a socialist politician and one of the early Labour Party Members of Parliament (for Romford, in Essex). Malcolm's brother Eric was one of the founders of Plan International. In his twenties, Muggeridge was attracted to communism and went to live in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, and the experience turned him into an anti-communist.
Malcolm Muggeridge
14 November 1990 (aged 87)
- Journalist
- author
- satirist
4
H. T. Muggeridge (father)
During World War II, he worked for the British government as a soldier and a spy, first in East Africa for two years and then in Paris. In the aftermath of the war, he converted to Christianity under the influence of Hugh Kingsmill and helped to bring Mother Teresa to popular attention in the West. He was a critic of the sexual revolution and of drug use.
Muggeridge kept detailed diaries for much of his life, which were published in 1981 under the title Like It Was: The Diaries of Malcolm Muggeridge, and he developed them into two volumes of an uncompleted autobiography Chronicles of Wasted Time.[3]
Early life and career[edit]
Muggeridge's father, Henry (known as H. T. Muggeridge), served as a Labour Party councillor in the local government of Croydon, South London, as a founder-member of the Fabian Society,[2] and as a Labour Member of Parliament for Romford (1929–1931) during Ramsay MacDonald's second Labour government. Muggeridge's biographer Richard Ingrams described H.T. as "a small bearded man with a large frame, a twinkling eye, and a rather bulbous nose which he passed on to his son."[4] Muggeridge's mother was Annie Booler.
The middle of five brothers, Muggeridge was born in Sanderstead, Surrey. His first name, Thomas, was chosen by H.T. in honor of his hero Thomas Carlyle.[4] He grew up in Croydon and attended Selhurst Grammar School there and then Selwyn College, Cambridge, for four years. Still a student, he taught for brief periods in 1920, 1922 and 1924 at the John Ruskin Central School, Croydon, where his father was Chairman of the Governors. After graduating in 1924 with a pass degree in natural sciences, he went to British India for three years to teach English literature at Union Christian College, Aluva, Kingdom of Cochin. His writing career began during his time in the Kingdom via an exchange of correspondence on war and peace with Mahatma Gandhi, with Muggeridge's article on the interactions being published in Young India, a local magazine.
Returning to Britain in 1927, he married Katherine "Kitty" Dobbs (1903–1994),[a] the daughter of Rosalind Dobbs (a younger sister of Beatrice Webb).[5] He worked as a supply teacher before moving to teach English literature in Egypt six months later. There he met Arthur Ransome, who was visiting Egypt as a journalist for the Manchester Guardian. Ransome recommended Muggeridge to the newspaper' editors, who offered him his first position in journalism.[6]
Return to India[edit]
After his time in Moscow, Muggeridge worked on other newspapers, including The Statesman in Calcutta, of which he was editor in 1934 to 1936. In his second stint in India, he lived by himself in Calcutta, having left behind his wife and children in London. Between 1930 and 1936, the Muggeridges had three sons and a daughter.[11] His office was in the headquarters of the newspaper in Chowringhee.
Second World War[edit]
When war was declared, Muggeridge went to Maidstone to join up but was sent away: "My generation felt they'd missed the First War, now was the time to make up."[12] He was called into the Ministry of Information, which he called "a most appalling set-up", and joined the army as a private. He joined the Corps of Military Police and was commissioned on the General List in May 1940.[13] He transferred to the Intelligence Corps as a lieutenant in June 1942.[14] Having spent two years as a Regimental Intelligence Officer in Britain, he was by 1942 in MI6 and had been posted to Lourenço Marques, the capital of Mozambique, as a bogus vice-consul (called a Special Correspondent by London Controlling Section).[15] Before heading out, Muggeridge stayed in Lisbon for some months, waiting for his visa to come through.[16] He stayed in Estoril at the Pensão Royal on 17 May 1942.[17]
His mission was to prevent information about Allied convoys off the coast of Africa falling into enemy hands.[18] He wrote later that he also attempted suicide[19]. After the Allied occupation of North Africa, he was posted to Algiers as liaison officer with the French sécurité militaire. In that capacity, he was sent to Paris at the time of the liberation and worked alongside Charles de Gaulle's Free French Forces. He had a high regard for de Gaulle and considered him a greater man than Churchill.[20] He was warned to expect some anti-British feeling in Paris because of the attack on Mers-el-Kébir. In fact, Muggeridge, speaking on the BBC retrospective programme Muggeridge: Ancient & Modern, said that he had encountered no such feeling and indeed had been allowed on occasion to eat and drink for nothing at Maxim's. He was assigned to make an initial investigation into P. G. Wodehouse's five broadcasts from Berlin during the war. Though he was prepared to dislike Wodehouse, the interview became the start of a lifelong friendship and publishing relationship as well as the subject for several plays. He also interviewed Coco Chanel in Paris about the nature of her involvement with the Nazis in Vichy France during the war.[21] Muggeridge ended the war as a major, having received the Croix de Guerre from the French government for undisclosed reasons.
Legacy[edit]
An eponymous literary society was established on 24 March 2003, the occasion of his centenary, and it publishes a quarterly newsletter, The Gargoyle.[35] The Malcolm Muggeridge Society, based in Britain, is progressively republishing his works. Muggeridge's papers are in the Special Collections at Wheaton College, Illinois, US.
In November 2008, on the 75th anniversary of the Ukraine famine, both Muggeridge and Gareth Jones were posthumously awarded the Ukrainian Order of Freedom to mark their exceptional services to the country and its people.[36]
In an interview on the Eric Metaxas Radio Show, notable Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias identified Malcolm Muggeridge and G. K. Chesterton as two important influencers in his life.[37]
A week following Muggeridge's death, William F. Buckley wrote a tribute published in The Washington Post.[38] Buckley, in an interview on C-SPAN, described Muggeridge as "a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful man, a great wit and a brilliant, brilliant analyst."[39]: begins at 00:18:53