In the course of a long, varied life, several of whose chapters were truly a “rake’s progress,” Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–90) managed, alternately and sometimes simultaneously, to amuse, inspire, and offend. Truth, he found out and said, orally and in print, is often in very bad taste. Yet he had a long and enviable line of admirers, including Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell, William F. Buckley Jr., Ronald Reagan, and Mother Teresa. He was one of the great English prose writers of the last century.
Historians on both sides of the Atlantic — including A. J. P. Taylor, Paul Johnson, and Richard Pipes …
