Malcolm Muggeridge

Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge (24 March 1903 – 14 November 1990) 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). 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.

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 also 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''.

Early life and career

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, 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." 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. He grew up in Croydon and attended Selhurst High 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), the daughter of Rosalind Dobbs (a younger sister of Beatrice Webb). He worked as a supply teacher before he moved 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.

Moscow

Initially attracted by communism, Muggeridge and his wife travelled to Moscow in 1932. He was to be a correspondent for the ''Manchester Guardian'' standing in for William Henry Chamberlin, who was about to take a leave of absence. During Muggeridge's early time in Moscow he was completing a novel, ''Picture Palace'', loosely based on his experiences and observations at the ''Manchester Guardian''. It was completed and submitted to publishers in January 1933, but there was concern by the publishers over potential libel claims, and the published book was not distributed. Very few first-edition copies exist today. That setback caused considerable financial difficulties for Muggeridge, who was not employed and was paid only for articles that were accepted.

Increasingly disillusioned by his close observation of communism in practice, Muggeridge decided to investigate reports of the famine in Ukraine by travelling there and to the Caucasus without first obtaining the permission of the Soviet authorities. The revealing reports that he sent back to ''The Manchester Guardian'' in the diplomatic bag, thus evading censorship, were not fully printed, and those that were published (on 25, 27 and 28 March 1933) were not published under Muggeridge's name. Meanwhile, fellow journalist Gareth Jones, who had met Muggeridge in Moscow, published his own stories. The two accounts helped to confirm the extent of a forced famine, which was politically motivated. Writing in ''The New York Times'' Walter Duranty denied the existence of any famine, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Jones wrote letters to the ''Manchester Guardian'' in support of Muggeridge's articles about the famine.

Having come into conflict with British newspapers' editorial policy of not provoking the authorities in the Soviet Union, Muggeridge returned to novel writing. He wrote ''Winter in Moscow'' (1934), which describes conditions in the "socialist utopia" and satirised Western journalists' uncritical view of the Soviet regime. He was later to call Duranty "the greatest liar I have met in journalism". Later, he began a writing partnership with Hugh Kingsmill. Muggeridge's politics changed from an independent socialist point of view to a conservative religious stance that was no less critical of society. He wrote later:

Return to India

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. His office was in the headquarters of the newspaper in Chowringhee.

Second World War

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''." 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. He transferred to the Intelligence Corps as a lieutenant in June 1942. 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). Before heading out, Muggeridge stayed in Portugal for one day. He stayed in Estoril at the Pensão Royal on 17 May 1942.

His mission was to prevent information about Allied convoys off the coast of Africa falling into enemy hands. He wrote later that he also attempted suicide. 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. 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
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