Do mere journalists deserve biographies?

Malcolm Muggeridge: A Biography, by Gregory Wolfe (Eerdmans, 462 pp., $35)

MALCOLM Muggeridge was, at various times, a hard-line socialist, a selfish adulterer, a courageous denouncer of the Soviet Union, an author of “flawed” plays and novels, a vegetarian, a convert to Roman Catholicism, and a Christian apologist. He was, for more or less all his adult life, a journalist and a man obsessed with himself. The journalism was originally writing, which he did very well, and later broadcasting, which he did in a supercilious and affected voice and very successfully. Gregory Wolfe has written a very good biography indeed. The question is whether Malcolm Muggeridge deserves it. I do not mean whether he deserves a good biography. I mean whether he deserves a biography at all. And if he does, in which of the above capacities is it merited?

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Digby Anderson

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Malcolm Muggeridge: A Biography, by Gregory Wolfe (Eerdmans, 462 pp., $35)

MALCOLM Muggeridge was, at various times, a hard-line socialist, a selfish adulterer, a courageous denouncer of the Soviet Union, an author of “flawed” plays and novels, a vegetarian, a convert to Roman Catholicism, and a Christian apologist. He was, for more or less all his adult life, a journalist and a man obsessed with himself. The journalism was originally writing, which he did very well, and later broadcasting, which he did in a supercilious and affected voice and very successfully. Gregory Wolfe has written a very good biography indeed. The question is whether Malcolm Muggeridge deserves it. I do not mean whether he deserves a good biography. I mean whether he deserves a biography at all. And if he does, in which of the above capacities is it merited?