Malcolm Muggeridge

Malcolm Muggeridge ( born March 24, 1903 in Sanderstead, near London, † 14 November 1990 in Robertsbridge ) was a prominent and controversial British journalist and secret service man. He was known for his reports on the famine in Ukraine in 1933, but is also regarded as the discoverer of journalistic Mother Teresa.

Muggeridge was born as one of five sons of Anne and Henry Thomas Booler Muggeridge (HTM), a well known South London Labour Party politician. Muggeridge grew up in Croydon, Selhurst Grammar School and graduated from the Selwyn College, Cambridge and went to as a teacher to British India and later to Egypt. In 1927 he married Katherine Dobbs ( 1903-1994 ), a niece of Beatrice Webb ( 1858-1943 ).

The committed in one of the labor movement family born Muggeridge seems to have been attracted by the experiment of Soviet communism initially. He traveled to Moscow for the first time in 1932, as a representative of the local correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. Soon after his arrival in the Soviet Union Muggeridge but was disillusioned. As a result, he was driving without permission of the Soviet authorities in the Ukraine and the Caucasus, covering the famine prevailing there ( today usually called Holodomor ) on. Muggeridges anonymous reports published in the Guardian, supplemented by the By-lined by Gareth Jones (1905-1935) alerted the world public about the disaster - the pro-Soviet correspondent for the New York Times, Walter Duranty disagreed with them and played down the conditions under Stalinism. ( On whether the Pulitzer Prize-winning Duranty thus a deliberate untruth committed as he publicly accused Muggeridge later, is still now performed a sharp debate ). Muggeridge, who had published at the beginning of his journalistic career a key novel about the Guardian want published the 1934 novel Winter in Moscow.

During the Second World War, Muggeridge worked for the British secret service SOE (Field Security Police) operate, including in Brussels, Lourenco Marques ( Mozambique ) and Paris.

After 1945, Muggeridge worked for various magazines and newspapers, including serving from 1953 to 1957 editor of the British satirical magazine Punch. An article Muggeridges for the Saturday Evening News, which provided the meaningfulness of the British monarchy in question was a scandal in 1957, which in the medium term, however, proved to be a career conducive to the author. In the 1960s, Muggeridge was a well-known British media personality namely as sharp-tongued radio and television interviewer.

Muggeridge interviewed Mother Teresa in 1968 in London. He turned in the result, a TV documentary about it and wrote a bestseller about her charity work in Calcutta. Muggeridge, previously rather an agnostic, published in 1969 Jesus Rediscovered and turned more and more religious themes. In 1982, he converted to Catholicism and his wife. His last book Conversion (published 1988) describes his life as a spiritual journey through the 20th century.

Works (selection)

• Winter in Moscow (1934 )
• Jesus rediscovered (1969 )
• Jesus; The Man Who Lives ( 1976)
• Chronicles of Wasted Time; An Autobiography (1972 )
• Chronicles of Wasted Time II: The Infernal Grove. London: Collins. 1973

Works ( German editions )

• God is me ( rediscoverd Jesus ) to your heels 1973, sowing Verlag GmbH
• Jesus, the man who lives (Jesus: The Man Who lives ) in 1980, John Publisher