Malcolm Muggeridge was already in his fifties when he first tasted real fame, but after that things moved fast. The Muggeridge boom began in Britain with his controversial editorship of Punch (1953– 1957). His attacks on the cult of the Royal Family (mildness itself by today’s standards) brought him notoriety on both sides of the Atlantic; by the 1960s, television had taken him up in a big way, and he seemed to be in demand everywhere, as broadcaster, journalist, lecturer, and “personality.” For the next twenty years or so he was to remain an almost inescapable feature of the media landscape. And then it all faded, quite quickly. When Richard Ingrams’s biography appeared in Britain last year, I was struck by how little stir it caused—a reflection on the subject, I think, rather than on the book itself. Ten years earlier, there would have been review-articles, reappraisals, a general buzz of excitement. Now nobody had anything much to say: the caravan had moved on. Yet Muggeridge’s story was well worth telling. The achievements may not especially endure—few of them were meant to—but the career retains an undeniable interest.

He was born Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge, in 1903. The “Thomas” was in honor of Thomas Carlyle, who was one of his father’s heroes; he grew up in a home where money was short, but where there was plenty of time for talk and ideas. The biggest idea of all was socialism. His father, whom he doted on, had left school