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Chronicles of Wasted Time
Back in print for the first time since Muggeridge's death in 1990, both published volumes of his acclaimed biography-The Green Stick and The Infernal Grove, plus the previously unpublished start to an unfinished third volume entitled The Right Eye-all brought together in one unabridged volume.
Born in 1903, Malcolm Muggeridge started his career as a university lecturer in Cairo before taking up journalism. As a journalist he worked around the world on the Guardian, Calcutta Statesman, the Evening Standard and the Daily Telegraph. In 1953 became editor of Punch, where he remained for four years. In later years he became best known as a broadcaster both on television and radio for the BBC. His other books include Jesus Rediscovered, Christ and the Media, and A Third Testament.
Born in 1903, Malcolm Muggeridge started his career as a university lecturer in Cairo before taking up journalism. As a journalist he worked around the world on the Guardian, Calcutta Statesman, the Evening Standard and the Daily Telegraph. In 1953 became editor of Punch, where he remained for four years. In later years he became best known as a broadcaster both on television and radio for the BBC. His other books include Jesus Rediscovered, Christ and the Media, and A Third Testament.
568 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
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About the author
Malcolm Muggeridge
102 books287 followersThomas Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist. During World War II, he was a soldier and a spy. In the aftermath of the war, as a hugely influential London journalist, he converted to Christianity and helped bring Mother Teresa to popular attention in the West. He was also a critic of the sexual revolution and of drug use.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
April 28, 2024
Quite possibly the greatest journalist of the 20th century (it’s a toss up with GKC), Muggeridge writes exciting and hilarious anecdotes with a prose that is nearly poetic. But you should probably have an interest in politics if you are going to read this book.
The first volume is titled The Green Stick, based on Tolstoy's belief that a green stick is buried somewhere that, if discovered and read, it "would destroy all the evil in the hearts of men and bring them everything good." Muggeridge held leftist views until he moved to Russia during the reign of Stalin, where his ideology slowly transformed.
...Freud and Marx... undermined the whole basis of Western European civilisation as no avowedly insurrectionary movement ever has or could, by promoting the notion of determinism, in the one case in morals, in the other in history, thereby relieving individual men and women of all responsibility for their personal and collective behaviour.
Muggeridge's departure from Marxist ideology seems to coincide with a slow conversion towards the Judeo-Christian worldview.
To accept this world as a destination rather than a staging-post, and the experience of living in it as expressing life's full significance, would seem to me to reduce life to something too banal and trivial to be taken seriously or held in esteem. The only thing that could make me falter in taking a position of extreme, if not demented, optimism about our human condition and prospects would be if one of the prospectuses for an earthly paradise... looked like providing a satisfying or fulfilled way of life. On this score I see no cause for present anxiety.
...from Adam's point of view, the apple came as a blessed deliverance; the Fall was mankind's first step to heaven, and it is interesting that all the Devil's advocates, from Epicurus to Rousseau, Walt Whitman, Marx and DH Lawrence, want to abolish it and regain an earthly paradise.
During his time in Russia, MM writes about a little abandoned church he finds in the woods...
[I felt] that I belonged to the little disused church... and that the Kremlin with its scarlet flag and dark towers and golden spires was an alien kingdom. A kingdom of power such as the Devil had in his gift, and offered to Christ, to be declined by him in favour of the kingdom of love. I, too, must decline it, and live in the kingdom of love. This was another moment of perfect clarification, when everything fitted together in sublime symmetry; when I saw clearly the light and the darkness, freedom and servitude, the bright vistas of eternity and the prison bars of time... at the back where the altar had been there was still the faint outline of a cross to be seen... In its survival I read the promise that somehow this image of enlightenment through suffering, this assertion of the everlasting supremacy of the gospel of love over the gospel of power, would never be obliterated, however dimly and obscurely traced now, and however seemingly triumphant the forces opposed to it might seem to be.
Coming back to London... everything looked different to me; especially the assumption on which I had lived from my earliest years, that such and such changes, brought about peacefully through the ballot-box, or drastically through some sort of revolutionary process, would transform human life; making it brotherly, prosperous and just, instead of, as it had always been, and still was for most people, full of poverty, exploitation and conflict. I no longer believed this, nor ever would again. The essential quality of our lives, as I now understood, was a factor, not so much of how we lived, but of why we lived. It was our values, not our production processes, or our laws, or our social relationships, that governed our existence.
When Muggeridge wrote Winter in Moscow, exposing the truths of the Soviet regime, most disregarded it and continued to believe in communism and Stalin. He comes to the conclusion that, "people, after all, believe lies, not because they are plausibly presented, but because they want to believe them."
Muggeridge also writes about his time as a journalist in India during the British Raj and as a secret service agent during WWII. It is a shame he did not complete the third volume, but we must be thankful for what we have.
The first volume is titled The Green Stick, based on Tolstoy's belief that a green stick is buried somewhere that, if discovered and read, it "would destroy all the evil in the hearts of men and bring them everything good." Muggeridge held leftist views until he moved to Russia during the reign of Stalin, where his ideology slowly transformed.
...Freud and Marx... undermined the whole basis of Western European civilisation as no avowedly insurrectionary movement ever has or could, by promoting the notion of determinism, in the one case in morals, in the other in history, thereby relieving individual men and women of all responsibility for their personal and collective behaviour.
Muggeridge's departure from Marxist ideology seems to coincide with a slow conversion towards the Judeo-Christian worldview.
To accept this world as a destination rather than a staging-post, and the experience of living in it as expressing life's full significance, would seem to me to reduce life to something too banal and trivial to be taken seriously or held in esteem. The only thing that could make me falter in taking a position of extreme, if not demented, optimism about our human condition and prospects would be if one of the prospectuses for an earthly paradise... looked like providing a satisfying or fulfilled way of life. On this score I see no cause for present anxiety.
...from Adam's point of view, the apple came as a blessed deliverance; the Fall was mankind's first step to heaven, and it is interesting that all the Devil's advocates, from Epicurus to Rousseau, Walt Whitman, Marx and DH Lawrence, want to abolish it and regain an earthly paradise.
During his time in Russia, MM writes about a little abandoned church he finds in the woods...
[I felt] that I belonged to the little disused church... and that the Kremlin with its scarlet flag and dark towers and golden spires was an alien kingdom. A kingdom of power such as the Devil had in his gift, and offered to Christ, to be declined by him in favour of the kingdom of love. I, too, must decline it, and live in the kingdom of love. This was another moment of perfect clarification, when everything fitted together in sublime symmetry; when I saw clearly the light and the darkness, freedom and servitude, the bright vistas of eternity and the prison bars of time... at the back where the altar had been there was still the faint outline of a cross to be seen... In its survival I read the promise that somehow this image of enlightenment through suffering, this assertion of the everlasting supremacy of the gospel of love over the gospel of power, would never be obliterated, however dimly and obscurely traced now, and however seemingly triumphant the forces opposed to it might seem to be.
Coming back to London... everything looked different to me; especially the assumption on which I had lived from my earliest years, that such and such changes, brought about peacefully through the ballot-box, or drastically through some sort of revolutionary process, would transform human life; making it brotherly, prosperous and just, instead of, as it had always been, and still was for most people, full of poverty, exploitation and conflict. I no longer believed this, nor ever would again. The essential quality of our lives, as I now understood, was a factor, not so much of how we lived, but of why we lived. It was our values, not our production processes, or our laws, or our social relationships, that governed our existence.
When Muggeridge wrote Winter in Moscow, exposing the truths of the Soviet regime, most disregarded it and continued to believe in communism and Stalin. He comes to the conclusion that, "people, after all, believe lies, not because they are plausibly presented, but because they want to believe them."
Muggeridge also writes about his time as a journalist in India during the British Raj and as a secret service agent during WWII. It is a shame he did not complete the third volume, but we must be thankful for what we have.
November 24, 2021
I can’t think of an autobiography I have enjoyed more. Muggeridge was born at the start of the twentieth century with a family that orbited the progressive Fabian world of Sidney and Beatrice Webb. After Cambridge he went to colonial India, worked for the Manchester Guardian, became a freelance correspondent in Moscow during Stalin’s terror, and ended up as an Intelligence Officer during World War Two. His cynicism about these times has a remarkably modern feel. He is highly sceptical of media reporting. He mocks progressive attitudes. He finds himself out of sorts with the predominant political choices of the era. Throughout he has remarkable access to key historical figures, from Gandhi to Coco Chanel. His writing is witty, wise and insightful. A must read for anyone interested in the history of the first half of the twentieth century, and strangely relevant to our increasingly fractious present.
April 14, 2022
“Any religious expression of truth, however bizarre or uncouth, is more sufficing than any secular one, however elegant and intellectually brilliant. Animistic savages prostrating themselves before a painted stone have always seemed to me to be nearer the truth than any Einstein or Bertrand Russell. As it might be pigs in a crowded sty, jostling and shoving to bury their snouts in the trough; until one of them momentarily lifts his snout upwards in the air, in so doing expressing the hope of all enlightenment to come; breaking off from his guzzling to point with his lifted snout to where the angels and archangels gather round God's throne.”
First of all, pigs can't look up. Second of all, this is bullshit.
First of all, pigs can't look up. Second of all, this is bullshit.
July 17, 2021
(Not a review)
If, like myself, you were not especially familiar with Muggeridge before picking up this book, I would suggest you read the preface first, then read the volumes in reverse order. Read the previously unreleased (and unfinished) third volume first. It's very short. Then backup to volume two, and finally fill in the gaps of his formative years with volume one.
In a recent interview with Jordan B. Peterson, Rex Murphy recommended this specific edition to the viewers, because it includes Muggeridge's unfinished third volume. I suppose that's nice to have, but I guess I thought of this little bit as more of an echo to the first volume, just in terms of its general sense of feeling about the world. So, I don't at all consider it essential material. It's only a handful of pages, even, and reads as if it were a footnote. If you're seeking this book out from a library, which doesn't have an edition that includes the third volume, don't be bothered. The first two volumes are enormous, and tell a good tale of Muggeridge's life and experience of the world.
You might also want to keep your Kindle's, or other copy of an Oxford English Dictionary to hand. There are plenty of words he uses which I don't think are fully appreciable by the surrounding sentence context. For non-French speakers, an occasional trip to Google Translate may be illuminating too. He occasionally tosses out items in French, and just leaves them there for you. What, doesn't everyone who learned to read English also know French? C'mon!
If, like myself, you were not especially familiar with Muggeridge before picking up this book, I would suggest you read the preface first, then read the volumes in reverse order. Read the previously unreleased (and unfinished) third volume first. It's very short. Then backup to volume two, and finally fill in the gaps of his formative years with volume one.
In a recent interview with Jordan B. Peterson, Rex Murphy recommended this specific edition to the viewers, because it includes Muggeridge's unfinished third volume. I suppose that's nice to have, but I guess I thought of this little bit as more of an echo to the first volume, just in terms of its general sense of feeling about the world. So, I don't at all consider it essential material. It's only a handful of pages, even, and reads as if it were a footnote. If you're seeking this book out from a library, which doesn't have an edition that includes the third volume, don't be bothered. The first two volumes are enormous, and tell a good tale of Muggeridge's life and experience of the world.
You might also want to keep your Kindle's, or other copy of an Oxford English Dictionary to hand. There are plenty of words he uses which I don't think are fully appreciable by the surrounding sentence context. For non-French speakers, an occasional trip to Google Translate may be illuminating too. He occasionally tosses out items in French, and just leaves them there for you. What, doesn't everyone who learned to read English also know French? C'mon!
December 17, 2007
Possibly the greatest English autobiography of the 20th century. Even though he didn't manage to finish it. Even though he shaved the truth in spots. One of the handful of books which, after finishing it, had made my sides literally sore with laughing (the first time that happened was in my teens with "Don Quixote").
February 26, 2024
At the end, was tempted to give it four stars, but I enjoyed it so much along the way that five stars seemed right. Apparently Muggeridge intended to write another volume to complete the story of his life, but wasn't to be. This ends at the end of World War II. I'd have liked that third volume to see how he completed his immersion in Christianity.
Am now reading a couple of his "religious" books written about the same time as this memoir . . . as one might expect, lots of consistency.
While much of the story of Muggeridge's life is interesting, and his reflections on his life and way-of-life are candid and self-deprecating, some of what I enjoyed most were comments on civiilization and society and what he sees as the dangerous ascent of the "ego." Of course, that's really nothing new . . . as he says here and in "A Third Testament," the battles between the will and the spirit (imagination) are ongoing and ebb and flow.
This isn't turning out to be a very useful review . . . sorry . . . rushed now . . . may return to this later.
2/24/24 Looked at this review again because an actor as Muggeridge appears in the current mini-series about Coco Chanel and Christian Dior. After ten years I can’t remember anything to add to this review (contrary to the possibility mentioned above). But may reread the book — very nice commentary on the climate of the interwar and WW II periods.
Am now reading a couple of his "religious" books written about the same time as this memoir . . . as one might expect, lots of consistency.
While much of the story of Muggeridge's life is interesting, and his reflections on his life and way-of-life are candid and self-deprecating, some of what I enjoyed most were comments on civiilization and society and what he sees as the dangerous ascent of the "ego." Of course, that's really nothing new . . . as he says here and in "A Third Testament," the battles between the will and the spirit (imagination) are ongoing and ebb and flow.
This isn't turning out to be a very useful review . . . sorry . . . rushed now . . . may return to this later.
2/24/24 Looked at this review again because an actor as Muggeridge appears in the current mini-series about Coco Chanel and Christian Dior. After ten years I can’t remember anything to add to this review (contrary to the possibility mentioned above). But may reread the book — very nice commentary on the climate of the interwar and WW II periods.
May 4, 2024
As Muggeridge was both one of the most famous journalists of the 20th C, and a Christian convert, I was curious to encounter both his writing style and his mind.
The former was sparkling, endlessly interesting, and motivating. His book began with an ode, of sorts, to his joy and delight in the power of words, and the ideas contained and his actual verve in writing made me stop and tell my wife how notable this was. The book itself was around 550 pages, and although this took some concerted time to read, it was never boring. There is an acidity to his insights; he never hesitates (actually, he positively delights) to skewer sacred cows, whether they be the vogue leftist society he emerged from, government institutions, trendy clergy, or himself.
There are both echoes of our own times and unchanging dynamics in his observations, as well as a very interesting phenomenon of capturing the mood and feel of historical times that I have read about “from a distance” in certain airbrushed form. His presentation of Edwardian working-class London, British India during the Raj (as well as Cairo), the Soviet Union in the Inter-War period, London in the Quiet War, the newsrooms of the Manchester Guardian, and Mozambique during WWII (when he was an MI6 agent) brought to life in new ways settings I had previously encountered. His memoires of life in Stalinist Moscow and the area were particularly eye-opening: I had heard of the brutality of life in Stalin’s regime, but this brought me to a new understanding of it.
Muggeridge’s faith is referred to echoingly throughout, although never for long at any point. He alludes in this way to his conversion as being something that somewhat stalked him for some time, but he never seems pious or sanctimonious. He is, in this area as in the rest of his life, unflinchingly honest and self-critical.
The former was sparkling, endlessly interesting, and motivating. His book began with an ode, of sorts, to his joy and delight in the power of words, and the ideas contained and his actual verve in writing made me stop and tell my wife how notable this was. The book itself was around 550 pages, and although this took some concerted time to read, it was never boring. There is an acidity to his insights; he never hesitates (actually, he positively delights) to skewer sacred cows, whether they be the vogue leftist society he emerged from, government institutions, trendy clergy, or himself.
There are both echoes of our own times and unchanging dynamics in his observations, as well as a very interesting phenomenon of capturing the mood and feel of historical times that I have read about “from a distance” in certain airbrushed form. His presentation of Edwardian working-class London, British India during the Raj (as well as Cairo), the Soviet Union in the Inter-War period, London in the Quiet War, the newsrooms of the Manchester Guardian, and Mozambique during WWII (when he was an MI6 agent) brought to life in new ways settings I had previously encountered. His memoires of life in Stalinist Moscow and the area were particularly eye-opening: I had heard of the brutality of life in Stalin’s regime, but this brought me to a new understanding of it.
Muggeridge’s faith is referred to echoingly throughout, although never for long at any point. He alludes in this way to his conversion as being something that somewhat stalked him for some time, but he never seems pious or sanctimonious. He is, in this area as in the rest of his life, unflinchingly honest and self-critical.
October 21, 2022
A wonderful autobiography by a excellent writer but for how long will he be remembered? It’ll become a footnote in histories for his pen portraits of politicians,writers and personalities.Nevertheless for those,mainly English people,who remember him this is a great account of a life up to the end of WW II. His account of life in Soviet Russia in the early 30s is a masterly piece of reporting totally ignored by the Western media,eager to believe stories of the success of heroic Communism marching forward into a glorious new paradise.At times his world weary attitude,seemingly arrived at while young,is a bit wearing but at least he claims to be consistent in his views.It’s a pity he never continued his life story but what we have will endure (as I see it has been reissued.).My copies were two 1970 paperback editions.
February 3, 2018
Read the first volume (The Green Stick).
Overall, most of the book I've found boring. Much of it is the tame writing style of the author, another is the subject matter. The final chapter, on the USSR, is by far the most interesting. Otherwise, there are a few brilliant paragraphs peppered throughout.
Overall, most of the book I've found boring. Much of it is the tame writing style of the author, another is the subject matter. The final chapter, on the USSR, is by far the most interesting. Otherwise, there are a few brilliant paragraphs peppered throughout.
May 25, 2020
This book was--okay. Well-written true, but the author displayed so honestly not only his own warts, but also those of the myriad cast of characters of his variegated career, that the only people I ended up truly admiring--Muggeridge's wife, Kitty, and their four children--were the ones he told the least about. Someone should write a book about Kitty Dobbs Muggeridge--she must have been a saint.
June 20, 2020
I just could not get into this. I do think this is a fault of my own and not the author’s as his prose is magnificent and certainly led an interesting life.
Also, I appreciate his candor in revealing his shortcomings and the shortcomings of what he experienced in communism as a whole—certainly applicable to our times today.
Perhaps I will return to this in the future with fresh eyes.
Also, I appreciate his candor in revealing his shortcomings and the shortcomings of what he experienced in communism as a whole—certainly applicable to our times today.
Perhaps I will return to this in the future with fresh eyes.
April 11, 2024
What a pathetic old fart. Did he have a single nice word to say about anyone on 555 pp of this book? It seems not. Nice command of the English language but rivers of black bile? While professing himself a Christian this old coot has zero conception of charity. Actually, I was waiting for him to say something nasty about Jesus too. Well at least he hated Stalin and other bolshies
January 16, 2019
Still not sure what it was I read when it was all over, but it was a beautiful and haunting journey all the while.
June 8, 2019
Excellent witness of his age. Witty and thoughtful. And critic to himself
July 3, 2020
"One of the greatest autobiographies of our time."
June 9, 2025
Glittering prose. Keen insights. Shrewd judgments, both of character and of events. Skewerer of platitudes and the pretentions of politicians.
October 6, 2025
Muggerridge is quite verbose and sarcastic. Some of which I understood, at times way over my head, but I appreciated the levity and playfulness.
May 20, 2020
The Slate Star Codex review makes this book sound a lot more interesting than it is.
February 21, 2017
An absolutely must read for anyone who wants to understand the twentieth century. Brilliant insights written with superb style.
November 5, 2014
The collected version of Malcolm Muggeridge's memoirs, The Green Stick and The Infernal Grove (along with the posthumously published snippet from the start of his third volume The Right Eye) form a wonderful encapsulation of the major events of the Twentieth Century. Muggeridge was there for it all and he tells it with just the right amount of detail and a devastating wit (some of the sections were laugh out loud funny). It is also a sort of pilgrim's progress from naivety to worldly experience. The son of a dyed in the wool British socialist his time in Russia under the Stalinist purges and his genocidal enforced famines cured him of any belief in the Utopias promised by the Left. While his own innate skepticism and cynicism exempted him from easy Right Wing Nationalism. His experiences with Socialism as a young man, life under the Raj; life in the Second World War as a soldier and spy all make this a fascinating read for those interested in the evolution of events in the Twentieth Century (also he knew and offers opinions about just about everyone Bernard Shaw, Graham Greene, Kim Philby, PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, DeGaulle, Churchill, Montgomery, Atlee, the list goes on - he is quite the name-dropper). I'd add another half-star and highly recommend it to anyone interested in the period.
September 30, 2012
This book was very long and he can spend an inordinate amount of time on little details. However, I really liked this book , Malcolm has that rare ability to see clearly when the majority disagree with him. Watching him change his beliefs through his life was fascinating.
Want to read
June 29, 2008Called one of the best autobiographies of the 20th century.
June 6, 2016
I found this book mildly engaging, although not a "must read." Some interesting stories and reflections, but on the whole it just was not that interesting.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews