cover image Muggeridge: The Biography

Muggeridge: The Biography

Richard Ingrams. HarperOne, $27.5 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-06-251364-9

In this authorized biography, Observer columnist Ingrams, a longtime friend of Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990), provides a lively, surprisingly intimate portrait of the British journalist, wit, novelist and TV personality, charting his transformation from socialist to dandy and editor of Punch (1953-1957) to lay apostle of Christianity. Muggeridge's 1932 trip to the Soviet Union with his wife, Kitty Dobbs (the niece of influential Stalinist socialist Beatrice Webb), shattered his faith in communism. As a journalist and a BBC commentator, Muggeridge found his voice, one of elegant mockery, when he satirized politicos and pundits. In the mid-1960s, Muggeridge, renouncing his heavy drinking, smoking and philandering, embraced Christianity; he later embarked on an evangelical crusade condemning the sex obsessions of the media, abortion and euthanasia and in 1982 converted to Roman Catholicism. Ingrams divulges details of his subject's numerous love affairs, lifelong insomnia, friendships with Anthony Powell and Mother Teresa and his turbulent relationship with Kitty, who mothered him and ``treated him like a little boy.'' Photos. (Feb.)