Malcolm Muggeridge

by Wolfe, Gregory

This biography chronicles the long and turbulent life of Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990), one of the most brilliant controversialists and media personalities of his generation. Drawing on Muggeridge's prolific writings, unpublished diaries, correspondence, interviews, and his own personal friendship with Muggeridge, Gregory Wolfe demonstrates the underlying unity - spiritual and intellectual - that runs through the many phases of Muggeridge's career. According to Wolfe, Muggeridge, like St. Augustine, endured a lifelong conflict between flesh and spirit, between deep involvement in the world and the need to withdraw from it. From his socialism upbringing under the influence of his father, H.T. Muggeridge, to his early years as a foreign correspondent in Cairo, Moscow, Calcutta, and Washington, to his stint as editor of Punch and his meteoric career as a television personality, to his conversion to Christianity and, ultimately, Roman. Catholicism, Muggeridge pursued the truth as a passio