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The Green Stick
With candor and wit the internationally-known editor and journalist records his aspirations and experiences from the early 1900s through the end of World War II
284 pages, Paperback
First published September 28, 1972
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253 people want to read
About the author
Malcolm Muggeridge
102 books288 followersThomas Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist. During World War II, he was a soldier and a spy. In the aftermath of the war, as a hugely influential London journalist, he converted to Christianity and helped bring Mother Teresa to popular attention in the West. He was also a critic of the sexual revolution and of drug use.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
August 1, 2014
A forgotten gem. Muggeridge reminds me a lot of G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis, with a little extra world-weariness and cynicism.
July 2, 2011
The first chapter is horrible. I almost put the book down, but am very happy that I didn't. Once Muggeridge starts story telling, it is hard to put the book down. Even more important, he has something to say, that is still important today. There are so many analogies to communism - which was politically correct 100 years ago, to the various untouchables that are politically correct today. I am not looking forward to seeing history repeat itself yet again, but am afraid it is inevitable.
June 26, 2022
The Green Stick (the reference is to Tolstoy) was published in 1972, a year after its author had made a memorable appearance alongside Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford in Trafalgar Square as part of a "Festival of Light" rally against "moral pollution". Given his apparent belief that society was doomed to a "Gadarene slide" into irredeemable decadence one wonders if he really thought he would achieve anything, although he was acting in accordance with the religious beliefs he had adopted a few years prior, as advancing years curbed his libido. His memoir is concerned with the first third of the twentieth century, but he views his early life and times through this same lens, so that the narrative is punctuated with sour cultural critique, acerbic sub-Chestertonian aphorisms and platitudinous spiritual ruminations.
However, Muggeridge was more than the "tub-thumping hack" (as described by Michael Palin's biographer Jonathan Margolis in relation to the Life of Brian debate); his engagement with literary culture was extensive, and although we wouldn't expect him to think much of someone like Allen Ginsberg it's notable that the American gets two namechecks within the book's numerous anachronistic digressions. Some of the unlikely chains of association bizarrely put me in mind of Iain Sinclair:
Socialist endeavours such as the Whiteway Colony near Sheepscombe are treated as comic follies, and his description of Sidney Webb is amusingly insulting: "a ridiculous looking man, with tiny legs and feet, a protruding stomach, and a large head. A sort of pedestrian Toulouse-Lautrec". However, the scepticism becomes bitter when Muggeridge is assigned to the Soviet Union and finds lack of interest and denialism in the West. At the end of the book he has split from the Guardian, accusing the editor William Crozier of "cutting" his reports.
Although Muggeridge was a convert to Christian faith, it seems that he was never antagonistic to belief. He was previously more of an agnostic than an atheist, "I cannot recall a time when the notion of Christ and Christianity was not enormously appealing to me". This was not an attraction to "Christian socialism"; rather, "what appealed to me were the wild extravagances of faith". In one passage he writes of "Woodbine Willie, or padre, style" ordinands:
As an undergraduate, Muggeridge studied at Selwyn College, Cambridge, and he went through baptism and confirmation as an entry requirement. Here he encountered Alec Vidler and Wilfred Knox, the former becoming a close friend and media collaborator.
Another university friend was Leonard Dobbs, through whom Muggeridge found not only his wife (Kitty was Leonard's sister) but also his first employment, with Lunn's Tours. As a tour guide in Belgium, "I acquired a facility for talking convincingly on a basis of very little, if any knowledge; an accomplishment equally useful in education, journalism and television". The firm had been founded by Sir Henry Lunn, who became a tour pioneer after organising a conference at Grindelwald on the reunion of churches and discovering reduced rates for bulk booking; Muggeridge became a close friend of his son, the author Hugh Kingsmill Lunn, who so disliked his father that he dropped "Lunn" from his surname.
From here, Muggeridge drifted into teaching abroad – first at a Christian college in Alwaye in South India, and then latterly in Egypt. A dispatch from Egypt to the Guardian brought an introduction to Arthur Ransome, and it was this that led to Muggeridge's employment by the paper.
Many readers will probably find most interest in the material about the Soviet Union, where Muggeridge recalls navigating various censors and officials and also interacting with other foreign correspondents. His assessment of the notorious Walter Duranty is that he admired Stalin and the regime "precisely because they were so strong and ruthless", rather due to misguided idealism or even mercenary motives. He was "getting his own back for being small, and losing a leg, and not have the aristocratic lineage and classical education he claimed to have".
However, Muggeridge was more than the "tub-thumping hack" (as described by Michael Palin's biographer Jonathan Margolis in relation to the Life of Brian debate); his engagement with literary culture was extensive, and although we wouldn't expect him to think much of someone like Allen Ginsberg it's notable that the American gets two namechecks within the book's numerous anachronistic digressions. Some of the unlikely chains of association bizarrely put me in mind of Iain Sinclair:
we live out the plays long before their vogue upon the stage, which is why they have so often a stale déjà vu air about them; why, as the applause breaks, there are sour looks among those who waited for Godot years and years ago, played football on The Wasteland when its only begetter still wore a monocle and called himself Captain Eliot; who howled and howled when Ginsberg in tiny ringlets was lisping out the Torah under a Rabbi's spreading beard.The story arc of The Green Stick is Muggeridge's disillusionment with his middle-class socialist upbringing and milieu, despite his affection and respect for his father, a Croydon councillor who served as a Labour MP from 1929 to 1931. At school one of his teachers was Helen Corke, who had had a relationship with D.H. Lawrence; after university he married Kitty Dobbs, whose mother Rosalind (although named only as “Mrs Dobbs” by Muggeridge) was a sister of Beatrice Webb who at one time had been dispatched by H.G. Wells on a doomed attempt to extricate George Gissing from a French woman whom Wells believed was “starving” him. Muggeridge eventually found work at the left-wing Manchester Guardian and was the first person at the paper to hear that its new editor Ted Scott (son of C.P.) had died in a drowning accident.
Socialist endeavours such as the Whiteway Colony near Sheepscombe are treated as comic follies, and his description of Sidney Webb is amusingly insulting: "a ridiculous looking man, with tiny legs and feet, a protruding stomach, and a large head. A sort of pedestrian Toulouse-Lautrec". However, the scepticism becomes bitter when Muggeridge is assigned to the Soviet Union and finds lack of interest and denialism in the West. At the end of the book he has split from the Guardian, accusing the editor William Crozier of "cutting" his reports.
Although Muggeridge was a convert to Christian faith, it seems that he was never antagonistic to belief. He was previously more of an agnostic than an atheist, "I cannot recall a time when the notion of Christ and Christianity was not enormously appealing to me". This was not an attraction to "Christian socialism"; rather, "what appealed to me were the wild extravagances of faith". In one passage he writes of "Woodbine Willie, or padre, style" ordinands:
a version of Christianity which emerged from the 1914-18 war, enormously sincere, ardent, and at the time seemingly vital, but which subsequently, for the most part, ran into the sand. This invariably happens when it is attempted to relate a transcendental faith to an earthly hope – in this case, pacifism.Muggeridge is more scathing of progressive clergy. Referring to his father's political campaigning: "The fact was, we made use of them… there was a sort of implicit pact whereby God was left out on the understanding that my father would accept the other's credentials as a progressive."
As an undergraduate, Muggeridge studied at Selwyn College, Cambridge, and he went through baptism and confirmation as an entry requirement. Here he encountered Alec Vidler and Wilfred Knox, the former becoming a close friend and media collaborator.
Another university friend was Leonard Dobbs, through whom Muggeridge found not only his wife (Kitty was Leonard's sister) but also his first employment, with Lunn's Tours. As a tour guide in Belgium, "I acquired a facility for talking convincingly on a basis of very little, if any knowledge; an accomplishment equally useful in education, journalism and television". The firm had been founded by Sir Henry Lunn, who became a tour pioneer after organising a conference at Grindelwald on the reunion of churches and discovering reduced rates for bulk booking; Muggeridge became a close friend of his son, the author Hugh Kingsmill Lunn, who so disliked his father that he dropped "Lunn" from his surname.
From here, Muggeridge drifted into teaching abroad – first at a Christian college in Alwaye in South India, and then latterly in Egypt. A dispatch from Egypt to the Guardian brought an introduction to Arthur Ransome, and it was this that led to Muggeridge's employment by the paper.
Many readers will probably find most interest in the material about the Soviet Union, where Muggeridge recalls navigating various censors and officials and also interacting with other foreign correspondents. His assessment of the notorious Walter Duranty is that he admired Stalin and the regime "precisely because they were so strong and ruthless", rather due to misguided idealism or even mercenary motives. He was "getting his own back for being small, and losing a leg, and not have the aristocratic lineage and classical education he claimed to have".
July 2, 2017
I picked up _Chronicles of Wasted Time_ after reading Scott Alexander's review of it and becoming immensely intrigued. For the most part, that payed off -- while nothing really staggered or surprised me, the autobiography was a highly engaging read, with dry humour mixed in with a rich taste of the political scenes of Muggeridge's life. I would agree with the assessment that it's hard to read his story and not come out with a certain respect and affection for him, which is all the more puzzling for people who have seen him on television in his later life. To quote the book jacket:
How can this be the same man as the harsh Savonarola of the telly, calling others to righteousness in the name of the man, or god, who insisted that only those without sin could cast the stones? In that paradox lies the heart of St Mugg's mystery. Perhaps it will be explained in the succeeding volumes of this superb book.
Yet there will not be succeeding volumes after _The Infernal Grove_, so we have to guess based on what we already know. Here is where I feel Scott's review drops the ball a bit. Scott hams up Muggeridge as a person always seeing decay in everything. Yet this is actually quite easy to explain. Aside from being a bit of a prude (notably unable to deal with the forthright nature of his quirky mother-in-law, who cared not one whit what others thought of her), Young Muggeridge is an idealist, a socialist of the first rank, raised by a Labour parliamentarian with tales of the coming revolution. He sees the decay of British society because it is pointed out to him, not to combat it but as a sign of the inevitability of the revolution. Where he does reflect critically on socialism in this early section, it is mostly Old Muggeridge we hear.
So Muggeridge and his wife go to the USSR, burning all but one set of their clothes in their eagerness to be free of this fascist society -- and thus being severely underdressed for the formal parties they go to in Russia. There Muggeridge is disillusioned, heavily and repeatedly. Firstly, the actual status of Moscow and the tight censorial controls he was faced with. Secondly, the great engineered famine of the Ukraine, which he saw in person. Thirdly, the dismissal of his negative reporting by the mainstream leftist press back in England, and the sharp rebuke he got for his attempt to reveal atrocities of the highest order. This in combination shatters Muggeridge's socialist faith. From then on, he sees the socialist movement as ideologically bankrupt, and he is adrift in the world, his wife -- whom he abandons for long periods -- his only professed rudder. From necessity, he attempts to court right-wing publications, but without much success.
Muggeridge wanted to believe. He latched onto military service with such enthusiasm because he hoped it would give purpose to his life -- even as he knew that in the end, the war was being fought between two evils. Being relegated to Intelligence, he found a role where he was objectively useful, even if his self-criticism would not allow him to admit it. In France, he saw again hypocrisy in the denouncements and executions of the Liberation, but now it barely registers with him, he would expect no less. His role in France allowed him to hop back and forth across the Channel, and as part of such, he at one point attempts to pass on Camus' _L'Etranger_ for translation -- a small footnote which I think is of importance for understanding Muggeridge at this point. He has detached, and finds reality absurd. This is Middle Muggeridge, when _The Infernal Grove_ closes on the two atheists being reburied in Westminster, and a Labour Prime Minister declares that "all they had worked for has come to pass", while Stalin destroyed his people and Europe lay desolate.
So how do we explain the shift from this Middle Muggeridge, cynical and detached, to Old Muggeridge, the bitter preacher? I think we have to assume that, political dimensions being ruined for him on the one hand by his upbringing and on the other by his disillusionment, he kept looking for something to believe in, and eventually found religion. If we cannot, as he had initially hoped in socialism, create heaven on earth, then alternative means must be found. Muggeridge had always been somewhat sympathetic to Christian mythos, and so the transition cannot have been too harsh.
June 1, 2020
Wickedly and unexpectedly funny in places, poignant in others, vividly evocative in few words. Finding honesty in The Guardian newspaper was as likely as finding a virgin in a Casanova novel, or a pregnancy in one of D.H, Lawrence’s!
I knew the name and the face from tv, and thought I knew him as a Christian, a version of CS Lewis. But there is little Christianity in this part of his autobiography which takes the reader up to Muggeridge’s complete disenchantment with and departure from the USSR. That came later, I think.
I had no idea he was so wickedly caustic and funny about people he knew! This was a delightful discovery. “Then there was the Rev. C. F. Andrews, hot foot from (Gandhi’s) ashram... Bearded, every inch a guru with meek downcast eyes, he seemed to be saying that his heart sank when he reflected how, though well past thirty, he had still not been crucified. One could not but share his sorrow, more particularly as there now seemed little possibility of this unaccountable gap in his range of experience being rectified.”
Downside? A bit of a name-dropper, and glosses over his own philandering (not that I was agog to read about it).
He is quite insightful into his own foibles and motivations and those of others, which gives a lift to his otherwise rather dreary reminiscences of his doing one thing after another that he never really believed in: studying (if that’s the right word) at Cambridge where he did very little, teaching in India, in Egypt, in the uk, writing for The Guardian.
There are a number of quotations from various writers which show how well read he was, though he admits to carrying around with him for years many books that he never read but thought he ought to and wanted to be seen reading.
A theme running through this book is the decline of the West, in particular the curious and perhaps unique characteristic of it being that it was hastened on by people who had been given the best education the West could offer.
“ at 13 my father left school, as you could in those days if you were clever and passed an exam. It was the exact opposite of now when you pass an exam to stay on at school. Both arrangements seem rather silly.”
“The 20th century is an age of almost inconceivable credulity, in which critical faculties are stifled player plethora of public persuasion and information so that literally, anyone will believe anything. It is on this basis that our great newspapers, television and radio networks, universities and schools, churches and, above all, our great advertising agencies and all there ancillary activities in the field of public relations, are conducted.”
“ from the moment of landing in Colombo, I was made conscious of my status as a Sahib. It was like suddenly inheriting a peerage and being addressed is My Lord. Just by virtue of being English and white... people made away for you... it was very insidious... though I continued to ridicule it, I came to count upon receiving special treatment.”
About India and the poor, he wrote, “ when floods came, and they had to leave their homes, they could comfortably carry all they possessed on their heads. Yet this very penury provided a kind of protection against the plastic world of the 20th century. They had no sales potential; the siren voices recommending eating this, wearing that, consume, consume, consume, would be wasted on their air. Their poverty immunised them against the chief sickness of the age.”
“ sailing through backwaters preferably not on the regularly playing paddle steamers but on a hand-propelled boat... conscious then of being an atom of life among innumerable other atoms. Momentarily separate, like drops of spray caught in sunlight.”
I knew the name and the face from tv, and thought I knew him as a Christian, a version of CS Lewis. But there is little Christianity in this part of his autobiography which takes the reader up to Muggeridge’s complete disenchantment with and departure from the USSR. That came later, I think.
I had no idea he was so wickedly caustic and funny about people he knew! This was a delightful discovery. “Then there was the Rev. C. F. Andrews, hot foot from (Gandhi’s) ashram... Bearded, every inch a guru with meek downcast eyes, he seemed to be saying that his heart sank when he reflected how, though well past thirty, he had still not been crucified. One could not but share his sorrow, more particularly as there now seemed little possibility of this unaccountable gap in his range of experience being rectified.”
Downside? A bit of a name-dropper, and glosses over his own philandering (not that I was agog to read about it).
He is quite insightful into his own foibles and motivations and those of others, which gives a lift to his otherwise rather dreary reminiscences of his doing one thing after another that he never really believed in: studying (if that’s the right word) at Cambridge where he did very little, teaching in India, in Egypt, in the uk, writing for The Guardian.
There are a number of quotations from various writers which show how well read he was, though he admits to carrying around with him for years many books that he never read but thought he ought to and wanted to be seen reading.
A theme running through this book is the decline of the West, in particular the curious and perhaps unique characteristic of it being that it was hastened on by people who had been given the best education the West could offer.
“ at 13 my father left school, as you could in those days if you were clever and passed an exam. It was the exact opposite of now when you pass an exam to stay on at school. Both arrangements seem rather silly.”
“The 20th century is an age of almost inconceivable credulity, in which critical faculties are stifled player plethora of public persuasion and information so that literally, anyone will believe anything. It is on this basis that our great newspapers, television and radio networks, universities and schools, churches and, above all, our great advertising agencies and all there ancillary activities in the field of public relations, are conducted.”
“ from the moment of landing in Colombo, I was made conscious of my status as a Sahib. It was like suddenly inheriting a peerage and being addressed is My Lord. Just by virtue of being English and white... people made away for you... it was very insidious... though I continued to ridicule it, I came to count upon receiving special treatment.”
About India and the poor, he wrote, “ when floods came, and they had to leave their homes, they could comfortably carry all they possessed on their heads. Yet this very penury provided a kind of protection against the plastic world of the 20th century. They had no sales potential; the siren voices recommending eating this, wearing that, consume, consume, consume, would be wasted on their air. Their poverty immunised them against the chief sickness of the age.”
“ sailing through backwaters preferably not on the regularly playing paddle steamers but on a hand-propelled boat... conscious then of being an atom of life among innumerable other atoms. Momentarily separate, like drops of spray caught in sunlight.”
February 1, 2019
"When, in 1930, I heard of Lawrence’s death - actually, at a cocktail party in Cairo; a quasi-literary affair of the sort that used to take place there in those pre-British Council days, in which a very little literature was served up with a lot of Levantine dressing - I found myself crying, though even then I was beginning to realise how shallow was the soil in which his thought and talent had grown and developed. It is the only occasion I can recall in which I cried over the death of a public figure unknown to me. I suppose I was unconsciously aware of how in some sense Lawrence was the prototype of us all - weaving a phallic cult out of his impotence, turning his shrill rage against the inexorable doomsday march of our time, howling down the corridors of time to produce a thin delphic echo. With his ribald seraglio of Baroness, Hon. Brett and Mabel Dodge; with Middleton Murry for John the Baptist and a sometime Bishop of Woolwich for posthumous advocate, he surely deserved my Cairene tears."
This passage has everything right and wrong with The Green Stick. The sentence ending in "thin delphic echo" is quite nicely written and points evocatively toward an interesting thought, but doesn't develop it into anything. And "Cairene tears" is, well, just a fucking hideously pompous phrase.
What's really impressive about Muggeridge, I have to say, is precisely the lack of substance--the ability to be evocative and allusive & write beautifully without showing evidence of a deep or disciplined mind. The man was a journalist, and in the final analysis he doesn't merit inclusion as a practitioner in the Chesterton mode (profoundly limited, yet ultimately thoughtful). Today so much of this just reads as vaporous musty rancors; catty, purplish prose.
This passage has everything right and wrong with The Green Stick. The sentence ending in "thin delphic echo" is quite nicely written and points evocatively toward an interesting thought, but doesn't develop it into anything. And "Cairene tears" is, well, just a fucking hideously pompous phrase.
What's really impressive about Muggeridge, I have to say, is precisely the lack of substance--the ability to be evocative and allusive & write beautifully without showing evidence of a deep or disciplined mind. The man was a journalist, and in the final analysis he doesn't merit inclusion as a practitioner in the Chesterton mode (profoundly limited, yet ultimately thoughtful). Today so much of this just reads as vaporous musty rancors; catty, purplish prose.
Read
May 1, 2009Chronicles of Wasted Time, the Green Stick by Malcolm Muggeridge (1973)
March 14, 2018
Haven't finished it but I have some thoughts.
In the opening pages, Muggeridge strikes you as a somewhat vaccuous connoisseur of words who seems to care more about the way he sounds in his head than actually talking about anything.
Though it was a true grind to get through, these first parchments contain glimpses - queer phrases and charming word choices - that beneath the charred outer skin lies the flesh of a singularly delightful writer.
It does get better. Much better. By the time the book - and Muggeridge himself - takes a turn into the deep south of pre-Independence India, this deeply divisive man has chaffeured you through supremely witty memories of his upbringing as a ne'er-satisfied, starry-eyed socialist in middle-class Croydon.
The description of a sea passage, in particular, where an entire host of second and third-class Tom, Dick and Betsys humorously transmogrify into 'Sahibs' and 'Memsahibs' as the scent of their colony's coconut palms draw near to their sweaty upper lips is a particularly wonderful scene.
A descendant of that very coconut earth to where Muggeridge was sailing on that forgotten day some sixty years ago, I felt oddly warmed by this love-hate relationship he had for these the backwaters of the subcontinent. This was a relationship swaddled by a nuanced nostalgia this genial Cockney looked back on this land with - a nostalgia that I now anachronistically share with him.
The only reason I hesitate giving it the full five is because, despite the book's brilliance, you get the feeling that Muggeridge could have helped himself with more story but, then again, when the writing is this good, you can't complain too much!
In the opening pages, Muggeridge strikes you as a somewhat vaccuous connoisseur of words who seems to care more about the way he sounds in his head than actually talking about anything.
Though it was a true grind to get through, these first parchments contain glimpses - queer phrases and charming word choices - that beneath the charred outer skin lies the flesh of a singularly delightful writer.
It does get better. Much better. By the time the book - and Muggeridge himself - takes a turn into the deep south of pre-Independence India, this deeply divisive man has chaffeured you through supremely witty memories of his upbringing as a ne'er-satisfied, starry-eyed socialist in middle-class Croydon.
The description of a sea passage, in particular, where an entire host of second and third-class Tom, Dick and Betsys humorously transmogrify into 'Sahibs' and 'Memsahibs' as the scent of their colony's coconut palms draw near to their sweaty upper lips is a particularly wonderful scene.
A descendant of that very coconut earth to where Muggeridge was sailing on that forgotten day some sixty years ago, I felt oddly warmed by this love-hate relationship he had for these the backwaters of the subcontinent. This was a relationship swaddled by a nuanced nostalgia this genial Cockney looked back on this land with - a nostalgia that I now anachronistically share with him.
The only reason I hesitate giving it the full five is because, despite the book's brilliance, you get the feeling that Muggeridge could have helped himself with more story but, then again, when the writing is this good, you can't complain too much!
September 27, 2022
Of course supremely well written by a man probably half forgotten today.I remember him on TV in the 1960s berating the world for its ills and falseness.This memoir/autobiography continues in this strain which I enjoy as he explains things well.I don’t agree with his analysis although clearly our society is riddled with inequality and a sense of emptiness.He sought an earthly paradise at first with the influence of his Fabian/Labour father until after living in India,Egypt and finally 1930s Russia he realised the impossibility of this and turned to Jesus and Christianity.The early years of people are what I like,to see how and why they developed their views on life, not so much their later achievements.Muggeridge was a gifted journalist and perfect for TV where he found a wide audience for his “ sermons” about the meaning of life.This memoir is wonderful on Soviet Russia and the fake news put out by respected journalists to influence the West.Horrors hidden with tales of impressive production.He supplies many withering assessments of historical figures but of course it’s only his opinion but entertaining.Do we ever really know other people?This is well worth a read but only for enthusiasts for early - mid 20th century history.
March 11, 2021
I picked this work up after reading several other Muggeridge works. This is the first volume of Muggeridge’s autobiography and is very interesting. His early realization that the communist regime in the USSR wasn’t quite up to snuff, as individuals like the Webbs and Walter Duranty wrote caught my attention. Muggeridge writing about the Soviet Regime’s efforts to keep people in, instead of keeping foreigners out brings back memories. From 1980 to 1982, I was stationed at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, the base was separated from communist Cuba by a series of fences only one put up by the U.S. the rest were by the communist regime. At the time the largest mine field in the world also separated the base and communist Cuba. All the U.S. owned mine faced Cuba, while on 1/3 of those in Cuba were facing the U.S., the others were facing their own people. One other thought about Muggeridge being in the USSR, when he first accepted the assignment he stated that he was planning on staying for good, I am thankful he saw the light, otherwise we would have lost an excellent author. Highly recommended...SLT
January 5, 2023
As Muggeridge recounts his early life of growing up in a socialist household in South Croydon, England, his early years working for The Manchester Guardian and his subsequent relocation to and disillusionment with the great Russian experiment he shares a number of remarkably prescient insights on the future of western civilization which are perhaps more pertinent today than they were when written in 1972.
There are are mentions of many British politicians whose names are now only vaguely recognizable to most readers as distant figures in old history books. Nevertheless, it is interesting to read his eye witness account of the events of the day.
Now on to Volume 2…
There are are mentions of many British politicians whose names are now only vaguely recognizable to most readers as distant figures in old history books. Nevertheless, it is interesting to read his eye witness account of the events of the day.
Now on to Volume 2…
August 11, 2020
The superb language more than makes up for the sometimes tedious chronicles of Muggeridge's wasted times set as they were in pre- World War Two India and Geneva. London was, of course, always a part of his life, and his years in and out of that city between assignments are vividly described. Dated as these recollections are there is no denying the author's impeccable grasp of the English language, and his fundamentally interesting life highlighted by knowing, and describing, some remarkable people who went on to become rather famous.
October 4, 2018
One of the better biographies I have read, and it has stood the test of time. There are passages of quite beautiful prose, and you can't help but be interested in Muggeridge's fascinating life (this was a man who lunched with Orwell and visited Churchill at Chartwell). Four out of five stars because, for the modern American reader, there will be some unfamiliar references. If you know what it means to be a Fabian, and who Sidney and Beatrice Webb were, you should be alright. Highly recommended.
July 23, 2022
Worthwhile for those who are interested in both Christianity and history. A little too cynical at times but it lays a foundation for the book to follow. This book is just part one. Also, there is a little too much name dropping which becomes less relevant and harder to relate to as these ‘names’ fade into historical obscurity. Beware of persecuting him for his beliefs, either those he once held or later adopted. Let his arguments and observations speak. They are worth hearing.
December 25, 2020
I have very mixed feelings about this book. The writing is lovely and, as you would expect from a journalist and editor of Punch, he tells a cracking story. But his overall perspective, along with his somewhat gelatinous religiosity, is limiting in my view. So, the details are wonderful but the effect on the whole is a too long article in a Church newsletter.
February 25, 2024
Beautifully and evocatively written, the first part of Malcolm Muggeridge's autobiography covering the period of his life to the early 1930s and his return from the USSR. His skewering of socialism, communism and other isms from the inside is unparallelled. A remarkable gem of a book
Want to read
April 19, 2017Doubtless other glories lie ahead. Bigger and better capsules carried to the moon; down in the test-tubes something stirs; "I think, therefore, you're not,' says the computer. We all know, though, in our hearts, that our old homestead is falling down; with death-watch beetles in the rafters, and dry rot in the cellar and unruly tenants whose only concern is to pull the places to pieces.
- The Green Stick, 16
- The Green Stick, 16
June 29, 2017
One of the most enjoyable books I have ever read.
October 5, 2022
Engrossing and honest look at an eventful life lived with the eyes open and the mind working.
March 24, 2015
Almost didn't 'think I could read the 430+ pages. I couldn't read every page with the same close attention. But it's worth the effort
Muggeridge lived through the 20th century. He began as the son of a socialist MP and the assumptions and promises of socialism formed his consciousness. His wife was the daughter of prominent intellectual socialists of the time.
He led her a trying life because he was gone so much and he was a philanderer while she stayed home and kept house and raised the children. Of course he was rather ashamed of himself after he was too old to continue womanizing.
Muggeridge writes of two stints in India, which focus his observations on the decline of the British Empire.
He and his wife lived in Russia where they observed the realities of Stalin's murderous version of socialism. Muggeridge's writing about it lost him the favor of a lot of people on the outside of that walled fortress. Presumably his conversion to Catholicism, inspired by Mother Theresa, also lost him fans, but this book doesn't deal with that.
World War II had him joining the service as an intelligence officer. He worked in Mozambique.
The book is a sequence of this person and that person and this and that incident. Fascinating but in the end like every life just one damned thing after another. And no photos.
Muggeridge lived through the 20th century. He began as the son of a socialist MP and the assumptions and promises of socialism formed his consciousness. His wife was the daughter of prominent intellectual socialists of the time.
He led her a trying life because he was gone so much and he was a philanderer while she stayed home and kept house and raised the children. Of course he was rather ashamed of himself after he was too old to continue womanizing.
Muggeridge writes of two stints in India, which focus his observations on the decline of the British Empire.
He and his wife lived in Russia where they observed the realities of Stalin's murderous version of socialism. Muggeridge's writing about it lost him the favor of a lot of people on the outside of that walled fortress. Presumably his conversion to Catholicism, inspired by Mother Theresa, also lost him fans, but this book doesn't deal with that.
World War II had him joining the service as an intelligence officer. He worked in Mozambique.
The book is a sequence of this person and that person and this and that incident. Fascinating but in the end like every life just one damned thing after another. And no photos.
October 30, 2008
Loved this - listened on tape. What a mind, what a life. It's like a first hand history of the 20th century.
September 6, 2014
A very interesting look into Muggeridge's life in the early 20th century. The writing is complex but well worth the effort.
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