A full life lived

Mental note: Don't live a controversial life if you intend to write an autobiography or memoirs and don't want to upset those close to you. After finishing Muggeridge:  The Biography, this is the great lesson I've learned.

Also, for an even read, don't frontload your life with debauchery. Spread that stuff out.

Seriously, though, the last three chapters of Ingrams' biography are in stark contrast to the book's entire first half.

Where young Muggeridge is a provocative and controversial figure, the elder Malcolm is a a man who finally finds the peace he has spent his life searching for. This arc makes for a fine life, and its ending could easily scare readers into action, but it also makes for a somewhat dull read.

However, this tedium only comes through in the book's narrative. Ingrams' style and prose stay strong throughout and help to keep a newcomer to Muggeridge interested through to the end.

A power dilemma

The middle decades of the twentieth century saw Malcolm Muggeridge move into much more lucrative endeavours, television among them. All the same, his story seems to chug along at this point, as if all of the most interesting things that will have have already happened to him. Or, maybe it's just that as he gets older it becomes more and more difficult for a twenty-something reader such as myself to relate to him.

Nonetheless, I can admire his constant desire to break with the common consensus. In particular, the idealization of political figures who, if viewed from a non mainstream angle, are as flawed as anyone else. Having heroes is fine, and maybe even necessary, but the sort of "can-do-no-evil" attitude toward figures like Churchill and Kennedy is troubling.

Giving so much power (in the form of attention and devotion) to one figure seems like an intractable part of human nature, though. It's as if, despite an inclination towards fairness and truth as moral standards, we still struggle with a drive for personal power and influence.

But, even if they're elected, there can only be one alpha human per group, yet with a proliferation of groups in our nearly truly interconnected world does that even matter?

Milieu in Muggeridge

Throughout the middle of the twentieth century Malcolm Muggeridge had a series of adventures. He became more involved in literary circles, was a Special Intelligence Services agent in World War II, and ended up as editor of Punch, England's Mad. He also had a series of affairs and dalliances while away from England.

But all of that seems like status quo stuff when there's a wild marginal reference prowling about this biography's pages.

On page 101, while introducing Malcolm's dear friend Hugh Kingsmill, Ingrams mentions that he had enlisted in "a regiment if cyclists" during World War I.

"A regiment of cyclists."

A part of the British armed forces from the late nineteenth century to the end of World War I, regiments of cyclists are just as they sound: units of the army whose distinguishing feature was the use of bicycles.

Apparently, and as you might expect, these units were primarily used for communications purposes, but also saw some combat. Bikes are definitely stealthier than horses, especially if they're as well maintained as any piece of army equipment is sure to be, so such work suits them perfectly.

Once again, the greater value of this biography proves to be the broader milieu that's lit by the biographer's lantern as it swings over an intimate subject.

Facts in the USSR

Two more chapters into Richard Ingrams' biography of Malcolm Muggeridge I have a much better idea of why he mattered and a fine sense of why I had no idea of who he was.

In chapter IV, simply titled, "Russia," (though it was still the USSR at the time) Ingrams chronicles Muggeridge's interest in Russia as a socialist paradise and how this interest turned into disillusionment and depression once he actually moved to the country. Once Muggeridge started going around as a freelancer and a correspondent, it became apparent that the socialist dream was just a front and that under Stalin millions were set to die of starvation. The observation and subsequent reporting of this were what made Muggeridge famous.

It wasn't that he was the only foreign journalist in Russia at the time, not by a long shot, but rather that he was the first to successfully write honestly about it. Others had tried, but either recanted once their articles reached publication because of political pressure, or just never managed to get them into print. With the exception of Muggeridge and a handful of others, it was as A.T. Cholerton put it: "Everything is true except the facts" (57).

As per why I had never heard of him before this, his import on the international front was a phenomenon locked into the 1930s. After all the 1930s were a time when the idea of socialism was popular among intellectuals and middle class members throughout Europe and America (which country had sent the Bolsheviks $66,000,000 for food in the 1920s (66); and which country officially recognized the USSR in 1933 (69)). As such, Muggeridge was a rare anti-socialist voice in the Western press at the time, though now such a stance seems almost common sense.

Having read more, I can also see why I was told that I ought to read this. Again, like most people graduating with some sort of arts degree, Muggeridge never lead his life with a solid plan but usually acted more on impulse. Speaking for myself, I'm not overly impulsive, but can still relate to living without a plan to which I stick like needles on a fir.

On a bit more of a petty note, it may be voyeuristic, but I find the letters and diary entries that Ingrams includes in his retellings of the various episodes in Muggeridge's life pretty incredible. It's easy to have a whitewashed sense of the past from text books and cleaned up cinematic accounts, but actually being able to read people's correspondence and personal writings really makes it clear how messy things could be. And, taking place in the mid twentieth century, how much attitudes towards things like sexuality were taking a more accepting turn.

It's about time I started on this bio

Getting back to my main reading list after making my way through some borrowed books, I've started into Richard Ingrams' Muggeridge: The Biography.

Admittedly, it's another gift book, but from when my collection was almost entirely kept in old paper boxes. Also, admittedly, it was given to me with instructions along the lines of "you should read this" that carried a subtext of "as soon as possible." Five years' time stretches the old ASAP out a bit, but I'm glad to finally get to it.

Before starting I had no idea who Malcolm Muggeridge was and why he was important. Four chapters into the book, this hasn't really changed.

He was a journalist and writer who had strong left leanings, who struggled with religion throughout his young life, acted impulsively, and regularly rebelled against the people or institutions with which he worked. My best guess is that "you should read this" was said when I was given the book because he, like many who study English at university/college, never had a strong sense of what he wanted to do once out in the real world.

It may also have been said since I was given this book around the time that I was on my way out to South Korea to teach English, while Muggeridge had done the same in India and Egypt around the same point in his life. So there're a few things in the biography that I can relate to, including 20-something Muggeridge's interest in Russia.

Anyway, being written in a very prim English sort of way, there are a few sentiments that I find curious. At the head of these is something from a diary block-quoted on page 39.

The diary is Rosie Dobbs' (Kitty Dobbs' mother, and Muggeridge's mother-in-law), and in it she opines on what she foresees as the result of "freer sexual union between men and women": that children will commonly be raised by the state, that women are merely trying to "become second class men," and that these trends could "end in degeneration and sterility of the race[.]"

They're the sort of sentiments that you'd expect from a woman who'd grown up in upper middle class England of the 19th century and lived to see the roaring 20s, but they're nonetheless notable since they're still expressed today in some circles. Is the end just always near?